<DOC>
[109th Congress House Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:27380.wais]
NATIONAL PARKS IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,
DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 12, 2005
__________
Serial No. 109-137
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/
index.html
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
DAN BURTON, Indiana TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
CHRIS CANNON, Utah WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee DIANE E. WATSON, California
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
DARRELL E. ISSA, California LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland
JON C. PORTER, Nevada BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia Columbia
PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina ------
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina (Independent)
------ ------
Melissa Wojciak, Staff Director
David Marin, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director
Rob Borden, Parliamentarian/Senior Counsel
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Phil Barnett, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman
PATRICK T. McHenry, North Carolina ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DAN BURTON, Indiana BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
JOHN L. MICA, Florida DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota DIANE E. WATSON, California
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
CHRIS CANNON, Utah C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina Columbia
Ex Officio
TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
J. Marc Wheat, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Mark Pfundstein, Professional Staff Member
Malia Holst, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on September 12, 2005............................... 1
Statement of:
Malmberg, J. Paul, regional director, Washington State Parks,
Southwest Region; Sally Jewell, trustee, National Parks
Conservation Association; Rex Derr, director, Washington
State Parks and Recreation Commission; Tim Wood, director,
Oregon State Parks; Russ Dickenson, former director,
National Park Service; and Rod Fleck, city attorney/
planner, Forks, WA......................................... 39
Dickenson, Russ.......................................... 62
Fleck, Rod............................................... 66
Jewell, Sally............................................ 45
Malmberg, J. Paul........................................ 39
Muldoon, Cicely, deputy regional director for public use,
Pacific West Region, National Park Service, accompanied by
Dave Uberuaga, superintendent, Mount Rainier National Park;
Bill Laitner, superintendent, Olympic National Park; and
William Paleck, superintendent, North Cascades National
Park....................................................... 11
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Dickenson, Russ, former director, National Park Service,
prepared statement of...................................... 64
Fleck, Rod, city attorney/planner, Forks, WA, prepared
statement of............................................... 70
Jewell, Sally, trustee, National Parks Conservation
Association, prepared statement of......................... 51
Malmberg, J. Paul, regional director, Washington State Parks,
Southwest Region, prepared statement of.................... 42
Muldoon, Cicely, deputy regional director for public use,
Pacific West Region, National Park Service, prepared
statement of............................................... 14
Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Indiana, prepared statement of.................... 5
NATIONAL PARKS IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
----------
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2005
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and
Human Resources,
Committee on Government Reform,
Bellevue, WA.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:12 a.m., at
the Lewis Creek Visitor Center, 5808 Lakemont Boulevard,
Bellevue, WA, Hon. Mark E. Souder (chairman of the
subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representative Souder.
Also present: Representatives Reichert, Inslee, and Baird.
Staff present: Marc Wheat, staff director and chief
counsel; and Mark Pfundstein, professional staff member.
Mr. Souder. Let the meeting come to order. Before I read my
opening statement, let me briefly describe for those who aren't
familiar with our Government Reform Committee what we're doing
here. Congress is basically structured with authorizing
committees. For the National Parks, it would be the Resources
Committee and National Parks Subcommittee to develop
legislation.
Any legislation that is based on the Centennial Act or
anything else would have to move through the Parks Subcommittee
and the Natural Resources Committee. Then the appropriation
process decides how to fund that. In the process, the
appropriators who often, I think, are in charge of everything
will also do policies with it, but they have to get a waiver
from the Resources Committee.
The Government Reform Committee basically looks at whether
the policies are being implemented the way Congress intended
and the way the money has been spent is the way Congress has
intended and is the oversight for all legislation and policy.
In the Government Reform Committee, we have kind of like, for
lack of a better word, three major subcommittees and then a
number of more targeted subcommittees.
The subcommittee I chair on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy,
and Human Resources has become the primary narcotics committee
in the U.S. Congress because not only do we do oversight, but
we also have authorization on the drug side, and recently the
speaker has assigned other drug policies to our committee,
although it's not clear whether it should go to the judiciary
or to Congress.
So we spend about half our time on narcotics issues, but we
also have very broad jurisdiction in my subcommittee to be able
to hold hearings on different topics.
So we have jurisdiction over the Department of Education,
the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of
Justice, the Department of HUD, as well as all faith-based
operations, NPR and so on, and because I swapped Department of
Commerce to another committee chairman in our arrangements with
National Parks.
Now, what we do in addition to the regular oversight we do
in our subcommittee, we try and focus on one area where I do a
series of hearings over 2 years and then issue a report.
About 4 years ago, we spent 2 years on the borders and used
that border report then as the foundational document that we
used in our creation of the Homeland Security Committee, which
I'm on on the borders, and the chairman had every Member read
that border report.
The last 2 years we focused in the last Congress on faith-
based and did a series of hearings around the country looking
at how that was being implemented and what the original intents
were versus some of the policy being done.
In this 2-year cycle, we're looking at our National Parks.
We have had a series of these hearings now in Washington, DC,
as well as at Gettysburg and in Boston. We are going to the
Grand Canyon next month. And we are doing a series of these
field hearings.
Whenever we do these oversight hearings, the authorizing
committee and the Appropriations Committee and the
administration are never happy. And it doesn't matter whether
it's Republican or Democrat, but we were in existence actually
before the authorizing committees, and so every time
jurisdiction is challenged, we win, as was the case in this,
and we have been going ahead. But it's been a little bit of a
slow start because a lot of people didn't want us to have our
hearings.
But as you can see now with this being our fourth hearing,
the hearings are going ahead full steam, and we'll be doing
about one a month for the foreseeable future. So I thank you
all for participating in this because I can guarantee you that
certainly since I've been in Congress and when I was in the
staff there hasn't been this systematic looking at the National
Parks around the country in an oversight perspective in a long
time, because in the day-to-day business of Congress you are
busy dealing with the legislation and trying to find the
funding. And we wanted to have a sweeping look across the
country in each region of the country, so I thank you for your
willingness.
This committee when Republicans took over was primarily
noted for all the investigations of the last administration. It
started with the travel office and running through to the end.
This time we're probably best known because we like to talk
about the past because Mark McGwire and the baseball people are
up in front of us on steroids, and that was probably the most
notable moment in this particular Congress, but that's what the
focus of this is. It's oversight to look at the financial
policy, long-term goals, particularly pointing toward the 100th
birthday of the National Parks System.
So I thank you for coming. As I mentioned, this is the
fourth in a series of critical hearings. I would also like to
welcome my fellow Members of Congress who deeply care about the
National Parks and who have joined me here today.
As I have said at many of the hearings, our American
National Park System is really one of our primary contributions
to the world as a concept. Many countries have National Parks
and have preserved their historic areas. No other country,
however, has developed the same kind of park system with such a
diversity and breadth and distinctiveness as our system.
Moreover, each park is unique unto itself. The majesty of
Mt. Rainier is different than the breathtaking volcanoes of
Hawaii, which are different from the historically and
emotionally significant sites of the Statue of Liberty and
Ellis Island. Although each site is an exceptional example of
history and natural beauty, all park service units share one
unfortunate commonality: funding pressure.
As operations and maintenance, for example, demand more and
more of the Park Service budget, the quality of the Park
Service is sure to deteriorate. In many areas, we have already
seen a decrease in hours of operation, decline of services and
the deterioration of facilities. The pressure on the Park
Service affects its ability to conserve and protect the
environment, provide recreational opportunities and educate the
public.
The parks of the Pacific Northwest contain some of the most
magnificent vistas, prime hiking and mountain climbing
opportunities and ecologically diverse zones in the Park
Service. If these parks are to remain, we must examine the
parks of this region, discuss their situations and work to
provide solutions so that future generations can enjoy what we
have today.
I am pleased to be joined today by several Members of
Congress, all of whom have a deep and abiding love of the parks
and the Park Service.
First, Congressman Brian Baird joins us today. He and I co-
chair the National Parks Caucus in the House. He also was
instrumental in the creation of the Lewis and Clark National
Historic Park.
I would also like to welcome Congressmen Jay Inslee, Dave
Reichert, and I know Rick Larsen will be here later because he
told me he was coming.
These gentlemen have demonstrated their commitment to the
National Parks not only by their presence here today, but also
through their efforts in Congress to make a better Park
Service.
I would also like to welcome our witnesses. Our first panel
consists of Cicely Muldoon, Deputy Regional Director for Public
Use, Pacific West Region. Director Muldoon will be testifying
on behalf of the Park Service. She will be joined during the
question period by Dave Uberuaga, Superintendent, Mount Rainier
National Park; Bill Laitner, Superintendent, Olympic National
Park; and William Paleck, Superintendent, North Cascades
National Park.
Our second panel will be Sally Jewell, trustee of the
National Parks Conservation Association; Russ Dickenson, the
former director of National Park Service from 1980-1985; Ron
Fleck, city attorney/planner of Forks, WA; Rex Derr, director
of the Washington State Parks; and Tim Wood, director of the
Oregon State Parks. We welcome you all.
I would now like to yield to Congressman Inslee for an
opening statement.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7380.001
Mr. Inslee. Well, thank you. I really appreciate Chairman
Souder coming here, and I'm sorry you didn't make it to any
Washington National Parks this summer; hopefully next summer.
We'll work on you in that regard.
It goes without saying we're talking about the crown jewels
of America here today, and I know everybody in this room cares
deeply about it.
Just as a personal note, one of the reasons I care so
deeply is my family goes back to the National Parks with my mom
and dad who worked with the SCA doing re-vegetation work up in
the damaged alpine meadows up in Mt. Rainier National Park in
the late 60's and early 70's. And we saw what can happen to our
parks as far as degradation when we don't care for them and the
great work that we can do if we can get the resources to get it
done. And right now those resources are greatly in jeopardy.
And just as a matter of a personal note, I will put in the
record, Mr. Chair, if I can, a little picture of Sahalie Peek
and Hidden Lake that I took a couple of weeks ago on a great
hike.
But I just want to note, and I will hand this around, this
shows to the right of this a place, Cascade Pass, and it's an
incredible spot. And it was actually trampled about 20 years
ago by all of us who loved it to death. And the people at North
Cascades National Park with their own resources and some
volunteers did an incredible job managing that resource so that
now when you go up there, you see alpine meadows, and you can
walk in sort of a defined area on occasion. And it was just an
indication to me of the great work that people have been doing
when they get the resources. And my complements to all the
folks who worked on that project.
But I want to note it's not just budgetary pressures we
have to talk about, and I will make a mention about that in a
minute, but there are two real threats to the National Parks
that are in a larger environment that go beyond just our
National Park policy.
One of those is the changes in the climate that affects the
entire ecosystem in our national parks. If you go up--in fact,
if you look at this picture here, there's a picture of Sahale
Glacier. Sahale Glacier is 1 of 117 glaciers in the North
Cascades National Park that are shrinking. All the glaciers are
shrinking. Four of them have actually disappeared. We have four
glaciers that were there when I was born and have disappeared.
Glacier National Park will not have glaciers in Glacier
National Park in 75 years if trends continue.
We have a massive change in our climatic system that has
created change in not only the glaciers, but the biospheres in
our National Parks. And I know that because I think it's
important every chance we get to talk about this threat to the
world that we grew up in in America.
I was in Denali Park a few years when they talked about the
moving tree line which is moving up which has the threat that
eventually some of those alpine meadows that I grew up with may
not be there in 100, 200 years if the tree line continues to
move up.
Congress has been willfully and totally AWOL dealing with
this issue. And no matter what we do voluntarily, unless we
deal with global warming, our National Parks are going to be
significantly diminished from the alpine meadow jewels that we
enjoy in Washington in the Olympics, Mt. Rainier and North
Cascades Park.
The second threat that's sort of epidemic, and that is that
we are told there is a grassroots circulation in the bowels of
the Department of Interior that in a major way would diminish
our commitment to the long-term commitment to keep our parks in
a pristine and natural condition.
We're told that a draft is circulating that would
essentially redefine what the word impairment is, which would
say you can go ahead and impair our parks if it's just on a
temporary basis. That just doesn't cut it. Jet skis, as my
friend Brian Baird suggested, don't belong in Crater Lake
National Parks, although, it would be intriguing to see them go
around the little island there.
This is a major threat to the very fundamental mission of
the National Park system, and we need for that memo to never
see the light of the day, that it is stopped before it hits the
public because I can say unequivocally that the consensus view
of the people I represent want to see National Parks for
several generations down the road, not just for the next 2
years' potential profitmaking enterprises in our National
Parks.
You know, we used to have a golf course at Paradise
National Park, but it really wasn't the right thing at the
right place, and we want to strangle that bad idea.
The third issue, and I will just make one comment, and I'm
looking forward to hearing from the panels about this, we do
not want to get ultimately into financing National Parks with a
bake sale situation. And there is a bill that is one potential
approach to this situation. But we have to have a finer way to
pay for the National Parks. If we do not have one of the tax
cuts go through for people who earn over $500,000 a year, if we
just reduce that by one fifth so the people who earn over half
million dollars a year have one fifth less of the tax cuts than
they have, you would totally wipe out the backlog of the
National Park. And we need to find a bipartisan way to pay for
this, and I hope we can do that.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
We're here in the home area of Congressman Reichert.
Mr. Reichert. Well, welcome everyone and thank you for
being here this morning. And I would like to thank the panel
for being here, and we look forward to your testimony. I
certainly thank Congressman Souder for being here and holding
this in this area and having an opportunity for all of us here
at the local area to be involved in this and listen to the
discussion and have an opportunity to ask questions that we're
all interested in hearing the answers to.
I agree with my colleague, Congressman Inslee, that we do
have to find some solutions here to protect our environment.
And I'm the new kid on the block, so I have some different
ideas and some hope that, as you see, we have a panel here, we
have Democrats and Republicans, so this isn't about a party
issue. This is about an issue for our community. And we all
have to take a part in this and all have to find a solution.
One of the solutions put forward by Congressman Souder is a
bill that would allow people to deduct--check a box on their
income tax to donate money, to have money withdrawn to put
toward taking care of our National Parks and helping with the
maintenance of our National Parks. I'm a co-sponsor on that
bill, and I'm hoping that goes forward.
Right now the current status of that legislation, it's been
referred to the House Resources Committee, and it's just one of
the ideas put forth. There were several ideas that are still to
come as we work on trying to find ways to fund this effort.
One of the other things that we've done is we've been able
to acquire $1.63 million which has allowed us to buy an
additional section of property on the south side of Mt.
Rainier, which is the Carter River Valley area, which many of
you might be familiar with. And that's an area that everybody
knows has had some flooding issues. So we were excited about
that when we heard that we were able to acquire the funding to
purchase that property.
So this is a great opportunity really, I think, for all of
us to come together to learn a lot more about our community,
our national parks and to begin to really look at solutions and
protect this environment.
I have three children and now six grandchildren, and I
would like them to enjoy the park systems as much as I have
during my 54 years here in the Northwest. So I also recall a
time when I used to have time to hike in the mountains, and
maybe some of you have been to Lake Dorothy recently, but back
a few years ago hikes to Lake Dorothy from the Snoqualmie/
Stevens Pass side, it was really, really well traveled, and at
one point they had to cut the trail off to block the road so
the people had to hike in further to reduce the amount of
traffic that was going up to Lake Dorothy.
So we have a lot of work to do. I'm pleased to be here and
have an opportunity to participate and, again, thank all of you
for being here, and we look forward to the witnesses'
testimony.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
Mr. Baird.
Mr. Baird. I want to echo the thanks to Chairman Souder who
has been just a champion of the parks. He's too modest to
mention it, but Mark has a goal, which is nearly achieved, of
visiting every single National Park in the system, something I
envy, having loved the parks as much as I do.
And Mark and I were proud to start the National Parks
Caucus within the Congress and, believe it or not, there are
caucuses for almost everything you can imagine, but there has
never been a National Parks Caucus even though so many of us
cherish the parks.
I want to thank all of you, the folks here in the audience
and particularly our witnesses, the superintendents, not so
much for being here today, but for what you do every single day
to preserve this magnificent treasure that we've been granted
for generations to come. And we're grateful for your work.
Jay mentioned his family connection. My father was a
seasonal park ranger at Colorado National Monument. Those hats
are very familiar. One sat on our dining room table almost
every night.
I note also Chip Jenkins is here. He's the superintendent
of America's newest national park, Lewis and Clark National
Park. And I'm pleased for the chairman's support and our
Senators and Maria Cantwell in particular who were able to pass
that. And I invite you all to visit the mouth of the Columbia
River and see where Lewis and Clark hit the Pacific Ocean on
the Washington side as well as on the Oregon side. We're
grateful for that.
Some years ago I tried to ask myself what is it that makes
our country so unique and special? And if we have newcomers to
our Nation, what values do you want to instill them with? And
as we try to export our highest values to the world, what would
those be?
And after a great deal of thought and a lot of study, two
things came to me that I think are so quintessentially part of
our culture that have been gifts to the whole world, and they
are the Bill of Rights and our National Park system.
If I had to say I had only two things to pass on, I mean,
there's jazz and baseball and lots of other stuff, but the Bill
of Rights and the National Parks are profoundly important to me
and to all of us I think.
One of my concerns is I think they are both under some
assault today, but particularly the National Parks. We face a
multibillion dollar infrastructure backlog, and we don't have
adequate personnel to staff the parks the way many of us
believe they should be staffed.
And as a result, we have seen curtailment of the naturalist
programs that many of us recall as young people, as children.
Remember taking your kids to the ranger? Many of us are of that
age where we remember. We were kids, too. But at one point
taking our kids to hear the ranger talk and learning about the
natural wildlife and the history of the area.
Those have been curtailed. Parks are closing. They are not
provided needed maintenance. And we're building a backlog on
this treasure that we've been given, a backlog of maintenance
and current and seasonal staffing. So I think we must address
that. So I will intend, I will say, to ask some pretty tough
questions today.
And I had the experience back in January of being concerned
about whether we would have resources for our returning
veterans from Iraq. I was convinced we wouldn't. I spoke with
people who worked for the VA at the time, and they were pretty
much under orders not to tell the truth. And they were told,
``Tell anybody who asks that we have adequate resources to meet
the needs of our veterans.''
Well, it turns out we were more than $1\1/2\ billion short,
and so I'm aware that any government official right now faces a
difficult challenge, and I will not jeopardize the careers of
these individuals because they are outstanding public servants.
But it is of great concern----
Mr. Souder. There is a sigh of relief.
Mr. Baird. But I contextualized that because I have
personal experience of seeing valuable, valiant public servants
being put in a difficult position of being given a mandated
admission that they passionately believe in, and yet not
getting adequate resources to fulfill that mission, but having
overt or implicit instructions that if they raise those alarms,
the very career that they so cherish could be in jeopardy.
So I will not try to jeopardize any of these folks, but I
will ask them very pointed questions about how many naturalists
are you able to provide right now, what kind of maintenance
backlogs do you have, etc.
And I will just close, I suppose, by echoing my friend Mr.
Inslee's comments. I read with, I wouldn't say horror, but I
would say outrage and indignation the reports about the Hoffman
memo. In my judgment, this fellow Hoffman may be the most
dangerous man in the United States of America today, and I aim
to do absolutely everything I can to stop his rewrite of the
mission of the National Parks.
And so I thank Chairman Souder for holding this hearing and
look forward to some very instructive and informative comments
from our distinguished guests.
Mr. Souder. I just want the people here from Washington to
know that in the other Washington we also know that Brian Baird
is one of the most shy, retiring Members on the Democratic side
and is not known to speak out in many cases.
And this is a very awkward process that we're all going
through, and I want to acknowledge this at the beginning of
this hearing because it is hard in the present atmosphere of
Washington, quite frankly, to do anything in a bipartisan way.
And one of our huge challenges with the National Park
Service is not to have it get in a crossfire of what is a very
evenly divided but steadily Republican tilt country right now,
and that if we can't build bipartisan support for the National
Park Service and hold that through this, it will suffer with
everything else that gets caught in the cross fire.
And it's very difficult because we have many things upon
which we disagree, but we're trying to figure out how we can
work this through. It's been very important, as you will see as
I go through the committee rules here, and I want to say this
for the record, that without Elijah Cummings, the ranking
Democrat on the subcommittee, allowing us to proceed with these
hearings even when he's not here, you can't do this. There
aren't very many committees in Congress that can work on,
basically, a unanimous consent basis.
Furthermore, the chairman of the committee, Tom Davis,
along with the ranking member, Henry Waxman, have given, in
effect, a budget that we can set up a field hearing, pay to
travel, pay the stenographers to do this in a bipartisan way,
which has been very important, and I appreciate that.
It's also not easy to get committees to get clearance to
allow other committee members to appear at the hearing and
participate as full committee members, as we're doing with the
Washington delegation today.
So first I ask for consent that all Members have 5 days to
submit written statements and questions for the hearing record
and any answers to written questions provided by the witnesses
also be included in the record. Without objection, it is so
ordered. And I ask for consent that all Members present be
permitted to participate in the hearing and without objection,
it is so ordered.
The technical thing that I just did, since I'm the only
member of the committee, I couldn't say have a voice vote, so I
said without objection it is so ordered, which means that
theoretically one of the Democrats could object later, but
we've had prior sign off. But that means now everybody can
participate in the hearing.
Our first panel is composed of----
Mr. Baird. Mr. Chairman, I just want to thank you for that
in all seriousness. It would have been very easy for the
chairman or others to say either, A, you cannot have the
hearings or, B, you can have them, but you can only invite
Members.
And we are certainly grateful, caring as we do for the
parks but not privileged enough to serve on that committee,
we're grateful for your indulgence in allowing us to be here.
Mr. Souder. Our first panel is composed of Cicely Muldoon,
deputy regional director for Public Use, Pacific West Region;
David Uberuaga, superintendent of Mt. Rainier; Bill Laitner,
superintendent of Olympic; and William Paleck, superintendent
of North Cascades National Park, who are not official
witnesses, but may be able to answer questions.
Now, as an oversight committee, it's a standard practice to
ask all those who testify to do so under oath.
I appreciate that what wasn't known in our previous hearing
was that Mark McGwire ducked the subpoena for 3 days because he
knew that if he came and testified under oath, he could be
prosecuted for perjury as Rafael Palmeiro is finding out right
now. The question is did he answer the questions when he was
under steroids or not, and the latest we have is we still don't
know. We're trying to sort that out because it appears he may
have been.
Now presumably, first off, I'm not going to ask any steroid
questions. Second, if you will stand, each stand and raise your
right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Souder. Let the record show that each of the witnesses
responded in the affirmative.
Ms. Muldoon, we'll have you speak, and then everybody else
can field questions.
STATEMENT OF CICELY MULDOON, DEPUTY REGIONAL DIRECTOR FOR
PUBLIC USE, PACIFIC WEST REGION, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE,
ACCOMPANIED BY DAVE UBERUAGA, SUPERINTENDENT, MOUNT RAINIER
NATIONAL PARK; BILL LAITNER, SUPERINTENDENT, OLYMPIC NATIONAL
PARK; AND WILLIAM PALECK, SUPERINTENDENT, NORTH CASCADES
NATIONAL PARK
Ms. Muldoon. OK. Thank you very much.
Mr. Chairman, Congressmen, good morning and thank you for
the opportunity to appear today at this oversight hearing on
issues facing the National Park Service in the Pacific
Northwest. Thank you, too, for your continuing support of
Congress for parks here in the Northwest and throughout the
National Park System. It's really terrific to have you all out
here and have such a good showing from the State.
As requested by the committee, our testimony today
highlights activities and issues related to maintenance,
funding, homeland security, partnerships and environmental
stewardship. And I know how Congressman Reichert feels about
being the new kid on the block, so I'm very pleased to have my
colleagues from the big three parks here today to join me in
the questions.
So to begin, I would like to speak to the Pacific West
Region, itself, and how we're organized. The Pacific West
includes 58 parks in Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada,
Idaho, Hawaii and the heart of the Pacific. Now, this testimony
is specific to the parks in western Washington and northwestern
Oregon, which we call the North Coast and Cascades Network.
This network includes Olympic, North Cascades, Mt. Rainier, San
Juan Island, Lewis and Clark, Klondike Gold Rush, Ross Lake,
Lake Chelan, Fort Vancouver and Ebey's Landing.
The networks of parks is a concept born of the Natural
Resource Challenge, and they work collaboratively to share
staff, training and expertise in all aspects of park
operations. So the large parks do a lot of the supporting both
of each other and small parks in every network across the
region.
I would like to highlight a few of the projects in the
Northwest parks that speak to funding sources, the maintenance
and visitor services and homeland security. Annual operational
funds, of course, are fundamental to our ability to keep day-
to-day operations running, and we deeply appreciate the
increases in operating funds Congress provided to the National
Parks in both fiscal year 2005 and upcoming in fiscal year
2006. Other annual operational funding is dedicated to cyclic
maintenance needs and repair and rehabilitation projects.
And for major construction projects, our parks have
appropriated construction funds, recreation fees and
contributions from other sources. The Transportation Equity Act
also provides a critical source of infrastructure funding,
authorizing more than $1 billion in funding for park roads over
the next 5 years.
So as some examples, locally North Cascades has repaired or
replaced aging infrastructure, campgrounds, trails, power
lines, bridges, roads and visitor facilities using line-item
construction funds, emergency storm damage moneys,
rehabilitation funds, user fees and mitigation funds that total
more than $7 million in recent years.
With 20 miles of boundary shared with Canada, North
Cascades also is a porous avenue for illegal aliens and drug
trafficking across the border. The budget increase from
Congress in fiscal year 2004 has been used to add park rangers
so that we're better equipped to assist with the Department of
Homeland Security in securing our borders and protecting both
park visitors and park resources.
At Olympic, the range of improvements include picnic tables
and campfire grills, improved roads and back country trails,
accessible restrooms and seismic retrofits. Olympic received an
operating budget increase of 4 percent for fiscal year 2005
which has enabled the park to hire additional seasonal
employees and include visitor services.
And finally, in the last 2 years at Mt. Rainier, the
National Park Services has completed four major construction
projects, and two other multi-year construction projects are
about to begin--rebuilding the Jackson Visitor Center and
rehabilitating the Paradise Inn. I see I'm out of time.
Mr. Souder. In the field hearings, we are a little more
generous with the 5-minute clock. We want to make sure we hear
what you have to say.
Ms. Muldoon. Thank you for that. I don't have far to go.
Another area in which Northwest park work extensively is in
partnerships, and the national parks in Washington State have a
long history of working with their neighboring national
forests. They share offices and visitor orientation facilities.
We share resources for wildland firefighting and emergency law
enforcement response.
The newly designated Lewis and Clark National Historic Park
is a leading national example in Federal/State collaboration
with Washington, Oregon and the National Park Service working
in concert to preserve the sites important to this great story
on both sides of the Columbia.
Seattle City Light uses runoff from North Cascades to
produce 25 percent of Seattle's electricity. This utility spent
$10.7 million to build the park's new Environmental Learning
Center which opened this past July. The North Cascades
Institute, a non-profit park partner for nearly 20 years,
operates and maintains this facility.
And finally I would like to touch on environmental
stewardship in the Northwest. Addressing threats to the natural
ecosystems is, of course, one of the greatest challenges we
have in the parks in the Northwest, and it's an area where
we're beginning to see some successes.
I think Olympic might be our poster child as the site of
one of the Nation's most critical restoration products, removal
of two dams on the Elwha. This will be the largest dam removal
effort in the Nation to date and I believe the second largest
restoration project in the National Park System.
We expect this project to result in restoration of salmon
and steelhead habitat and populations which will benefit the
Elwha tribe and the local communities and restore a healthy
ecosystem.
Invasive species are a critical threat in the Northwest and
throughout the Nation, and the Northwest parks are actively
engaged in working with public and private partners to combat
invasive species, particularly plant species, throughout the
region.
So with that, Mr. Chairman, that concludes my statement,
and we will be happy to answer any questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Muldoon follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Thank you for your testimony. Tell Jon Jarvis I
said hi. I very much appreciated that when he was
superintendent and we had a problem with our car, I still
remember him running alongside the car trying to hear what was
wrong with it. My wife was not going to go down. Brian was
telling me about--I'm not a climber. He's a climber. We were in
a car. But my wife wasn't going to go down the mountain with me
in that car. So he saved us at that time, and I appreciate
that.
I listened to a number of the things that were proposals
back then now being implemented. If I could ask, I remember I
believe it was 2001 when I was at Olympic when this river dam
project was about to be started. Has this been moved back? When
was the original target?
Mr. Laitner. Sir, I would be happy to. First of all, thank
you for the invitation to be here. We appreciate the
opportunity to come before Congress. Quite frankly, though, I
wish we were on a trail with you this afternoon rather than
sitting here.
The Elwha River restoration project is the second largest
project that the National Park Service has ever undertaken.
Right now the current schedule is to begin dam deconstruction
in late 2008.
Because there are 22 million cubic yards of silt behind the
dams, we need to make sure that the drinking water for Port
Angeles and the industrial water for Port Angeles remains
clean. So the National Park Service is in the process with the
city of building a municipal water treatment plant and
industrial water treatment plant.
We're working with the tribe to construct a new fish
hatchery so that when this habitat opens up, we can restock the
area. We're working with the tribe to extend the levy for flood
protection.
We're working with neighbors outside of the park on the
Elwha River to insure that their properties don't become
flooded. And we are in the process of building a greenhouse to
re-vegetate that area with many millions of plants.
So all of those things need to take place prior to dam
deconstruction. But we're, with our many partners, moving fully
ahead to open up 74 miles of habitat for salmon and steelhead
that is now closed because of two dams.
Mr. Souder. I would like to look at this, this is kind of a
mini case here for a second, and how we look at questions like
backlog. Has that been--it's hard for us to tell what is a wish
list, what is a backlog, what is in need of imminent repair.
Has that been counted in the backlog up until now?
Mr. Laitner. Actually, I don't believe that has been
included in the backlog. Parks are at different stages of
determining what their backlogs are.
Olympic National Park this summer had a contract team come
in and do what is called a Comprehensive Condition Analysis of
our front country facilities. What do your buildings look like?
What repairs do you need? What do your utility systems looks
like? What repairs do they need?
And the results of that team coming in are not yet into the
computerized system, so it appears for Olympic, for example,
that our number is $23 million, which is quite a lot lower than
Mt. Rainier's. It doesn't mean that Olympic's facilities are in
much better condition than Mt. Rainier's. It simply means that
our needs have not yet been entered into this national
computerized data base.
Mr. Souder. When you said that you are in the process of
working with the Indian nations, with the community of Port
Angeles, all of which were critical before that project was
ever going to be undertaken, will there be funds outside the
Park Service, say, through the Department of Interior that go
to the Indian nation, through the Department of Energy or water
resources or wherever the money might come from to Port Angeles
in addition to the Park Service or is this going to go through
the Park Service budget.
Mr. Laitner. Most of the money comes through the Park
Service budget. However, especially in the field of research,
we are looking to many partners. A National Science Foundation
Grant just went to Peninsula College in Port Angeles and to
Western Washington University in Bellingham for $1 million to
study the effects of dam removal.
I mean, what a great opportunity to look at an area that
was pristine, two dams went in, almost 80 years went by with
nothing else happening, two dams are going to come out, and be
able to look at the changes.
We're looking for a lot of private support for that part of
it. There are also some moneys from the tribe and some from the
city, but the bulk of the funds come through the National Park
Service.
Mr. Souder. So when we look at a park budget, and taking
Olympic in particular here as an example, you are going to have
a backlog figure, you are going to have a general operations
figure, and then something like this would be an additional
project.
Mr. Laitner. Right. It's in the portion of the budget that
is the line-item construction, and that money to do all those
things that I mentioned comes through that funding source.
Mr. Souder. And if the region is giving--unlike most
discretionary funds, at least the National Park Service got an
increase, it's right around 3 percent or thereabouts, so in a
region then--maybe, Ms. Muldoon, you can address this question.
If there is a project that is a new project, and that
project presumably is going to be, although, it's out in 2008,
is going to take money, do you see this coming out of the
operations or kind of tackle the backlog? How do you make a
priority decision?
Ms. Muldoon. A project like the Elwha would never come out
of operations. It's too big of a one-time shot. That typically
in our world comes out of the line-item construction funds.
Anything that is over $500,000, a project of that size competes
nationally with other line-items.
Mr. Souder. If I may interrupt you for just a second then,
if you are saying you get it out of the line-item construction,
is it Congress then that is determining whether something goes
to line-item construction or NPS? Because if you have $100,
let's just say it was $100 in the total budget, and you have a
backlog in your general operations, 3 percent doesn't even
cover--a 3 percent increase means you have lost ground in
staffing. So that section of the budget is losing ground.
How do you make a decision and who makes the decision? Is
it made at the national, at the regional or the park level as
to, yes, we're going to put this money in new construction,
which means we're going to be this much extra short?
We all know what the numbers are. There's no way to handle
the pensions, health care, the salaries, under the existing
structure, and the backlog isn't going down. So the question is
what do you do with the projects, which I don't want to kill
new projects, so the question is how are you--where does this
money come from and who is making that decision?
Ms. Muldoon. The full answer for the record on that one, I
would defer to my colleagues. My understanding is that for much
of the line-item construction funding in particular, the Park
Service sets priorities and submits them to Congress, and
Congress assigns those priorities and line-items and more
parks.
Mr. Souder. For parks, which I'm for. We're the elected
officials. It's just I'm wondering then how that ripples into
the system. If there's an earmark in your area that comes
through, does this come out of your other budget then.
Ms. Muldoon. If there's an earmark in line-item
construction, it just bumps down our existing priority list for
line-item construction which is set regionally and then also
set nationally. Parks compete for those projects. So the Park
Service has a standing priority list for construction, and
earmarks are inserted in that priority list, so it just bumps
them down through the years.
Mr. Souder. I will followup on that question. I mean, the
total budget for the parks or anything else, in other words, if
we earmark it for that, if we earmark it in highways, that
total budget doesn't change? It comes out of that, and
presumably earmarks are then assigned by region or something by
the Park Service? It doesn't mean it necessarily goes up to
that region.
That's what Brian was asking, and I'm curious, too, in
relation to the same question, what happens precisely when
something gets earmarked, how does that ripple through in the
budget and what does it do?
Does it mean that what I understood you to say is it comes
out of the Pacific West Region, it comes out of the zone marked
construction, so there's less other, but somebody also made the
decision to keep a certain amount of dollars of construction
versus operation and backlog?
Ms. Muldoon. That's right. You know, I'm going to defer to
Dave Uberuaga on this one.
Mr. Uberuaga. I will try that. So we have distinct pockets
of money, if you will. Line-item construction is a stand-alone
in the Park Service appropriation. And each park has needs of
projects that are over $500,000 prioritized at a park level
that are prioritized and compete on a regional level and then
as well on a sophisticated scoring system based on needs,
safety and visitor access, how many people are receiving the
benefit from that and how serious of a maintenance backlog
maybe even that is involved in repairing this facility.
So those priorities within the line-item construction are
in that category of that budget. And sometimes we've had as
much as $400 million in line-item construction, sometimes it's
as low as $150 million, but in that range depending on the
appropriators.
So in the case, I will give an example, Sunrise Lodge at
Mt. Rainier was scheduled on the Park Service's and Mt.
Rainier's schedule for funding in 2008. That would have been on
the table for the appropriation 2008. Based on the priorities
that are coming in, something was inserted, earmarked, if you
will, in 2004 or 2005 that bumped all projects that were below
it, maybe bumped them down in a priority, and finally that
particular project was rolled to the next year. So Sunrise is
going to be in fiscal year 2009 in this year's schedule.
It doesn't mean it's off the table. It just means if there
have been any inserted, then it would have a ripple effect
through the whole priority. But line-item construction is kind
of self contained and the appropriators range depending on
funds available.
Mr. Souder. And my impression, and I will ask Mr. Dickenson
who has had expertise at the Federal level for years, too, is
that then in reality, the Park Service will make a request
that's basically--I mean, you have this ongoing kind of project
list that really you are working out.
How far would you say, if you have new proposals, are you
now proposing out to 2012?
Mr. Uberuaga. We have a rolling 5-year program.
Mr. Souder. So 2010 is the farthest out you are. So if you
have new things, you are kicking it in to 2012 now. And then
Congress, when we put earmarks in, we bump a certain amount of
that back, and those presumably you make requests up to the
regional office, the regional office then kicks them up to the
Park Service and reworks it coming over to Congress and then
Congress tinkers with it. Is that the general process?
Ms. Muldoon. Yes.
Mr. Souder. So when we earmark, it doesn't necessarily
change regions, and it doesn't necessarily change accounts. It
just alters the year structure within those accounts for
everything else in that region.
Can the regional director reshuffle if he wants to keep
certain things or do you have the flexibility or once you have
this kind of long-term plan, how locked down is that plan?
Ms. Muldoon. The regional director has some discretion to
reshuffle, but generally line-item construction gets set as a
region, and then it moves on to a service wide priority setting
committee, so then those priorities are set on a service wide
basis. So our boss couldn't take a Pacific West project and put
it over on a Southeast project that has already been put on.
Mr. Souder. But he could switch it around in the Pacific
West or is that----
Mr. Uberuaga. He has that discretion.
Mr. Paleck. I think it's 10 percent, and then we re-program
it, request to re-program it.
Mr. Souder. Particularly when you have cooperative
agreements, I would assume that puts some pressure on it as
well because if Port Angeles and Indian nations said, ``OK. We
have our money. We can't go two more years or we are going to
lose it,'' you would be able to--do you have a process to, in
addition to 10 percent, do a request that would be--I mean, is
that done or is that considered?
Mr. Uberuaga. Well, if I understand it correctly, in the
evaluation of each project, there are a number of scoring
factors. So partnership is a scoring factor, you know. If it's
a life/safety/health issue, that scores more. So all of the
projects are ranked, and so there is a scoring in that
relationship.
So if something does come up, and then it's re-scored, you
can look at that and move it up in priority, and the regional
director has that discretion.
Mr. Baird. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the
witnesses. Just to make sure I understand, let's suppose
theoretically your region has $1 billion just for a nice round
number.
Mr. Paleck. Sure.
Mr. Baird. It's a nice round number. And you decide we're
going to try to get money for a particular project that we find
important. It doesn't sound like you have actually added money
to your region. It sounds like to me what we have done is we
have forced you to take that money that we just patted
ourselves on the back be earmarked and moved that higher up the
priority list, so it would mean other things got knocked back.
Is that correct?
Ms. Muldoon. That's correct.
Mr. Baird. We should know that when it's being earmarked.
Mr. Uberuaga. You can add funds to the earmark.
Mr. Baird. That's a helpful suggestion. I would be remiss,
by the way, if I didn't also acknowledge the presence of the
NPCA. The National Parks Conservation Association has been a
stalwart supporter of the parks, and I am grateful for their
presence. I also want to mention our wonderful Fort Vancouver.
We should acknowledge that and appreciate that, and Tracy
Fortnum does a fantastic job.
We have, coincidentally, a visitor center project down
there which we would like to see funded. For some people who
are 40 years old now and growing, the use of that park would
warrant some funds for that.
You mentioned earlier the field had $1 billion in National
Parks over 5 years. Any sense off the top of your head? $1
billion sounds like a lot of money, but I'm wondering any sense
of the total number of road miles of international parks, even
a rough approximation, or in your own just for example?
Mr. Uberuaga. At Mt. Rainier, I have 88 miles of paved
road, all national historic landmark designated road. So there
are cultural roadways as well as the infrastructure that ties
all of those together. And I have seen contracts recently from
$1 million a mile to $2 million a mile even in the State here
in terms of what the projects cost.
Mr. Baird. Is that for maintenance or----
Mr. Uberuaga. That would be for reconstruction and
rehabilitation of the roadway. So in the bill, those are
primarily for reconstruction, rehabilitation of our roadways.
At Mt. Rainier, we have seven projects in the package there,
and they are all $5 to $7 million each over the next 5 years.
And so that impact in our case would be about $75 million
in maintenance backlog currently in the 5-year program for our
roads at Mt. Rainier.
Mr. Baird. The reason I ask that is because one of the
things I found back there is you can have a number that sounds
pretty big, like $1 billion nationwide, and then when you start
breaking it out to where the demands are on it, you realize
it's not big at all.
So if you have 88 miles of road, and it takes $1 million to
refurbish a mile of road, and this is difficult terrain, you
have all kinds of sensitivities, sometimes shifting landscape,
rock falls, creek passages, etc., so you say here's Mt.
Rainier, $1 million a mile, 88 miles in one park alone.
If you look at a park like Yellowstone or Yosemite, you
pretty quickly add on, and you realize that's how we get to
these shortfalls when we talk about billions of dollars in
shortfalls. You just simply do the math, and you realize that
what sounds like a big number.
And it's fun, I mean, as a politician or administration,
you can pat yourself on the back and say, ``By God, we have $1
billion in this bill,'' and everybody says, ``Oh, my goodness,
$1 billion is a lot of money.'' And then you start piecing it
out, and you realize it's a lot, but it's not nearly a lot
enough.
Mr. Souder. May I make a point for the record that official
testimony says correctly that there was a 27 percent increase
since the last highway transportation bill. The last highway
transportation bill was 6 years ago which means just basic
inflation would have taken about 24 percent of that. So it's
really at most a 3-percent increase assuming the highway costs
didn't go up at a faster rate than general inflation, which it
would, and that's part of the problem with the numbers.
Mr. Baird. Exactly, and that's part of the reason that Mr.
Souder and I have responded is in recognition of that. And our
goal is by the 100th anniversary, we can eliminate this backlog
with the help of voluntary largely contributions from our
taxpayers.
Now, on a similar kind of--I'm going to pursue this issue
of maintenance, and over the last number of years, I'm going to
ask each, if I may, just give me your best assessment of what
has happened here to the systems in terms of trail maintenance?
How many miles of trail have you been able to improve? Are
there trails that you have closed down or are not maintaining
and letting them sort of survive as they will under the rigors
of human transport and nature?
Mr. Paleck, let's start with you.
Mr. Paleck. Thank you, Mr. Baird. North Cascades National
Park Service complex has 398 miles of trail. As you may recall,
there was a devastating flood in October 2003, and most of our
attention shifted from routine maintenance to replacing major
bridge structures, replacing entire sections of trail that were
lost in the flood.
In fiscal year 2005, we received $689,500 for emergency
storm damage. The year before, it was $668,800. Most of that
money, frankly, went to trail repairs and major bridge
structure repairs. And I'm pleased to report that by the end of
this fall, we'll have all those major trail structures
replaced. There was also damage to campgrounds and roads, but
the road money comes from separate accounts.
The challenge of maintaining 398 miles of trail with a
limited and shrinking staff in a place that grows vegetation
quite profusely is a real challenge. Happily we have a very
skilled crew. Also we rely on the efforts of volunteers that
help us. The Pacific Crest Trail, for example, goes through a
portion of the park, and we rely on PCA volunteers.
To say that we're keeping all 398 miles of trail in a
constantly well-maintained condition would not be accurate. So
we make decisions based on popularity of the trails and the
conditions as we encounter them.
Mr. Baird. I appreciate that. One of the reasons I ask the
question is I've have constituents recently come tell me
they've been hiking on the trail system in the park with their
family, and the trails were basically gone, and they had to
turn back both for safety concerns and for fear they might get
lost because it was just gone.
Mr. Uberuaga.
Mr. Uberuaga. Thank you. In Mt. Rainier, we have 228 miles
of maintained trail, and we have almost another 100 miles of
non-maintained trail, just the end of the road in some cases
that it's noted in the trip planning as well.
We have relied on our fee demonstration funding to maintain
our trails. We have based it on really three trail positions.
The rest of them are relying on project dollars each year to
see what project dollars we get for what trails we'll be able
to open and maintain.
We have the supervisor of our trails who has been at Mt.
Rainier 40 years. He takes exceptional pride in every linear
foot of that trail, every culvert. You can ask him about every
foot bridge. And the crew and its dedication, to me, has made
the trail system what it is today and how it's maintained. It's
their dedication. It's their pride. They can't go home until
that segment is done.
We've had a tremendous amount of volunteers. The most
common volunteer effort at Mt. Rainier is for companies,
whether it's Unilever or K-Mart or in this we've had Boeing Co.
quite often come in with crews to help facilitate our trail
maintenance throughout the park.
On a couple of occasions, and I could speak to it myself
coming up to a trail this last year with a river crossing,
actually a small stream crossing, and what we have done over
the years is look at rather than an extensive bridge across
that line-item, we put what we call a stringer or a log bridge,
and in those cases some of those log bridges can be knocked out
one or two times, three times a year.
And with our regular patrols, a crew may not be out for 3
or 4 days before they find the log has been removed and they
have to replace it.
So in general our trail crews rely on project dollars
specifically for trail bridges, trail tread and erosion and
have done an outstanding job. But every year we are not sure if
we are going to get the money to do that. And just the regular
season opening of fallen timber across trails is monumental. We
survived the flooding with about $140,000 in back country trail
damage that did not specifically fund--we did not get any money
specifically to overcome that deficit, but the trail crew
through their ingenuity and some resources around the park took
care of those deficits just this last summer and during the
winter as well.
So that would be my comments on our trail system.
Mr. Baird. Thank you.
Mr. Laitner. Olympic National Park has approximately 600
miles of trails that range from trails on the Pacific Coast to
trails through the Rain Forest and trails in the high country.
In 1998 and 1999, the Pacific Northwest before I got here was a
very strange winter. It would snow, and then it would rain, and
then it would snow and then it would rain.
And much of that snow accumulated on bridges, and it wasn't
just snow, it was ice. Normally the snow will come on the
bridges, it will get to a certain point, and that's as much
snow as you can get on there. Well, in that year several
bridges collapsed. It took us from early 1999 until
approximately the middle of 2003 to fix those bridges.
I remember talking with the trail crew, and we were kind of
getting the feeling like we were getting ahead, we were real
proud of flying in two major bridges that were over 100 feet
long, and then in the fall of 2003, there was that rain storm
that my colleagues have referred to, and we lost all of the
ground just about that we gained. We lost several roads that we
did repair and a lot of miles of trail.
Olympic National Park did not get any storm damage,
emergency storm damage money, so we took the project money that
would have gone to other projects and redirected that to higher
level emergencies.
I had the distinct pleasure of being out in the park over
Labor Day, and I did a solo hike of about 55 miles. And I had
crossed the Elwha River at Chicago Camp, and I had slipped on
the rocks and gotten my feet wet and stopped and got across and
took my boots off and put my dry socks on.
And I looked at the map and said, ``Well, at least the next
stream crossing has a bridge.'' And I got to the next stream
crossing, and it had half a bridge. It had a very nice half
going over the middle of the river. And I had forgotten that
had been washed out during the floods of 2003. And so I took my
boots and socks off and put on my Teva's and went across the
river one more time.
I think that park visitors have gone through that many
times over the 600 miles of trails. I think we have gotten
trails so that you can find the root, but we have certainly not
repaired trails. As Dave Uberuaga was saying, most of our trail
crew are based or paid out of project funds rather than
National Park Service based funds. That was not true 10 years
ago. It was just the opposite. We had trail crews paid out of
base funds. But we rely on volunteers, some foresters come in,
some conservation associations, Washington Conservation, a
number of groups come in to help us out.
But our 600 miles of trails need work. Actually on another
hike, I met two seasonals who I had not met before. They were
hiking, and they had this wheel that they were pushing along. I
knew that they weren't the usual back country users. They were
inventorying all the trails and the condition.
And we don't have that yet in our maintenance backlog, and
I think that's another reason why our number at Olympic
National Park is low. Mt. Rainier National Park is a pilot park
and has more up-to-date information on roads and trails and
maintenance needs than does Olympic.
And I think that in the next year when we catch up, if you
will, it's going to show that there are significant needs at
Olympic National Park.
Mr. Baird. I thank you. And the one thing I would say is we
hear a lot about waste, fraud and abuse in government, and
there's no question in my mind that we need to eliminate that.
One thing we don't hear about are the employees who work
tremendous hours, tremendous dedication, volunteer time, and we
owe them a great deal of thanks because as resources have been
cut, these employees have really taken it on their own to try
to keep fighting the good fight to keep the resources.
And I want to thank you and thank them through you, and if
you pass on our gratitude, I would appreciate it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Reichert.
Mr. Reichert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to take
the opportunity to thank you, Dave, for your tour several
months ago of 3 to 4 hours. We had the opportunity to watch
some volunteers in action repairing one of those foot bridges.
And they offered me a chainsaw, I think, and I turned it down.
But it is a great experience to see volunteers, people from
around our community, come out and meet these challenges.
You know, in my previous life with the sheriff's office, we
depended a lot on volunteers, 2,500 volunteers through our
search and rescue program working on Green River, working on
you name it, and they were always there. So this is a truly
community effort.
And by the way, you serve a great lunch and have homemade
pie and all that stuff out there. So I can see that's one of
the other reasons why they come out, plus just the fun of it.
We've talked a lot about, you know, the funding sources
that you have, and I just jotted down a few notes. The Natural
Resource Challenge, 160 percent increase over 2001 from $25\1/
2\ million to $76.6. What does that really mean, the Natural
Resource Challenge, that increase, what does that actually get
used for?
Ms. Muldoon. The Natural Resource Challenge has been around
since 2001, and that is actually new money that Congress has
appropriated to the Park Service. It was an initiative that
sort of came from the ground up. Superintendents put it
together and identified the lack of knowledge that the Park
Service really had across the system in understanding the whole
realm of our resources.
So the intent was to establish the natural resource
challenge, get a certain level of funding every year from
Congress, which happily you folks did to help us understand the
resources we have in the parks and help us make decisions that
were based on good science.
Mr. Reichert. So how does--just to followup on that, the
good science effort and those fundings that helped you kind of
evaluate the resources, how does that apply to how you
prioritize your maintenance backlog? Does that science come
into play in that effort?
Ms. Muldoon. That's a good question. I will let the
superintendents speak to how that might have happened in their
parks.
Mr. Reichert. Not yet maybe? See, I always seem to stump
the panel.
Ms. Muldoon. That's a good one.
Mr. Uberuaga. Actually, sir, there's a lack of scientific
knowledge in all the parks in terms of the species and bio that
are in existence there, so the Natural Resource Challenge was
kicked off in 1999. Actually it was announced during the
National Park Service celebrating Mt. Rainier's 100
anniversary. So at our centennial celebration, we had the
director, and that was the announcement.
And the goal of that campaign, if you will, was to increase
funding for science and natural resources $100 million over the
next 5 years. That was the original goal that Congress began,
and so every year it funded for that.
In terms of the resources that are assigned under the
Natural Resource Challenge, there isn't a direct connection
between that science and our preferred maintenance in a lot of
cases. The preferred maintenance primarily has been some re-
vegetation, so there's been some of that, but for the most part
it has been the big infrastructures, roads, treatment plants is
the main focus. So it's a direct connection to the deferred
maintenance.
Mr. Paleck. I can give you one example. The flood in 2003
literally wiped out half of the campground, the Colonial
Campground, off of State Route 20. It was a campground we
inherited from the Forest Service in 1968. And that portion
based on the hydrological studies that have been done is that
the campground never should have been put in that place.
And the science informed us that in looking at what repairs
should we do, we shouldn't try to rebuild the entire
campground. Instead we should back off, accept the loss of half
a dozen sites in order to site the facility in a place where it
can be sustained.
Mr. Reichert. I was just curious as to how this might
impact the efforts there in making decisions on just that kind
of scenario.
So I would think that good science helps us to make good
decisions and helps us to direct our resources where they are
most needed.
And we have talked about the increase of the transportation
budget which really ends up to be instead of 27 percent, as the
chairman said, 3 percent. And there's been a substantial
increase in your operating funds, but you are still falling
behind, you know, your real needs. So the bottom line is how
much money do you need for your maintenance backlog? Do you
have a figure you can give us today?
Mr. Uberuaga. I think you would be in shock.
Mr. Reichert. Because Brian is ready to write a check.
Mr. Uberuaga. Well, I just have a little bit of context
here in terms of the deferred maintenance. Let me just use Mt.
Rainier as an example. Mt. Rainier is the fifth oldest national
park in the system. It's 106 years old. The infrastructure that
was created when the park was designed is all part of the park
experience, plus 3 percent of the front country is now national
historic landmark district. Almost all of that is our roadways.
And so all of those historic villages connected through the
roadway system are also cultural resources all obtaining the
national standard or the high standard in the country of
national historic landmark district.
So you have cultural preservation on top of just
maintenance of infrastructure, and so the preservation and the
combination of those has contributed to the overall cost to the
rebuilding of those.
And for Mt. Rainier, $71 million is what we have in our
system. Again, we were a pilot study for what we call asset
management, primarily what are the biggest assets we have at
Mt. Rainier, and we prioritized them from No. 1 to 229 and on
and on until we had each one ranked and prioritized. And then
we did field condition assessments that would look at that
structure and say how much is it going to take to repair that.
And then there's another level of funding coming that would
have an architect or engineer come in instead of a historic
carpenter and kind of touch up the professional judgment of the
carpenter and then say here's the best estimate of what the
deferred maintenance is on this, and this is the condition of
this facility.
So, based on that and the new asset management program,
there are industry standards that are applied to estimate how
much it would cost to repair those. So we are looking at
industry standards, industry practices for assessing conditions
of facilities, finding out how much it's going to cost to
repair and then estimating those costs of repairs. So that's
all built into the National Park Service system now, and each
park is taking on that challenge to more accurately define this
backlog.
But what I can tell you, quite frankly, is the more you
delve into it, you know, what was maybe a carpenter's guess as
to how much it was going to take to rehab a building, what was
our initial input into all the systems, and when you come back
with a professional architect, for example, and they look at
every detail, then those numbers all have tended to go up.
So at Mt. Rainier, the historic roads that are out there is
about $71 million, as I said. Just two visitor projects alone
at Mt. Rainier, rehabilitation of the national historic
landmark building Paradise Inn, which is scheduled for 2006,
that's a $13 million project, and the replacement of the Henry
M. Jackson Visitor Center with a new visitor center, between
those two it's a $35 million in deferred maintenance backlog.
Those are backlogged projects in the National Park System at
Mt. Rainier.
So those two replacements, plus the replacement of the
Sunrise Lodge, which is another $10 to $12 million project,
those are the three biggest pieces that add up to $35 million
in Mt. Rainier backlog.
And then when I did the inventory on the trails, the
bridges, the campgrounds, several water systems, several sewer
systems, all the historic buildings that we have that are all
contributing factors to the cultural districts, all the back
country structures and then power systems, at two parts of the
park alone we generate our own power, at Sunrise, the second
most visited destination in the park, we are off grid. So you
look at those systems, and they do take a lot to repair.
And what I would call our projected backlog at this time is
$168 million for Mt. Rainier.
Mr. Reichert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Souder. I don't want to make it a request, but first
off I would like to have the full document inserted into the
record. Is that a problem?
Mr. Uberuaga. No.
Mr. Souder. The second thing is if you have similar
documents for the other parks, that would be helpful, that
would show the specifics of your backlog.
I don't want you to waste limited time coming up with
something that you don't have, so when I say go back 5 years,
if you have it, say, like one from 3 years ago and one from 6
years ago, but to do a comparison to see how that backlog is
moving. In other words, did it drop? Did it go up? And how much
of that is because either projects have fallen into backlog
because they haven't been maintained and how much of that is
inflation and how much it would take to do it if we had done it
5 years ago.
Because I'm not sure exactly, I don't want to make this too
big of an effort, but one of the things that we're sorting out
here is the assigned date to pick up projects like you just
mentioned with Sunrise, Paradise, roads, trails, moves. It's a
moving target based on how much we fund national priorities.
When we add something like the Lewis and Clark Park, it changes
a region, that you can easily on those backlogs show if there's
any kind of tracking of how many times that's changed.
In other words, like let's say Sunrise Lodge is slated for
2005, moved to 2006, moved to 2008 or moved to 2009, so we can
just kind of get a feeling for what is happening with the
budget process as to how you are moving things around.
The bottom line is this is going to blow a huge hole in our
budget and everything, and every agency is feeling squeezed. I
mean, part of the reason we have to be cautious working with
this is that we can talk about a tax increase and we can talk
about other things, but even then we're talking about a
relatively small zone. We have these same problems with
Medicaid, Medicare, water clean up around the country, so there
are going to be squeezes.
What we want to know as the Congress is that we have a
right to know what squeezes are being made. And we don't feel
right now that we really have a good feeling for the decisions
that are being made. We may still have to make them, but we
need to know what they are.
Mr. Uberuaga. OK. Help me clarify this, then. And it wasn't
indifference to Katrina and the other country needs that I said
that, but in terms of----
Mr. Souder. No, I understand that.
Mr. Uberuaga [continuing]. This involving truly commiting
what I call a very sophisticated asset management program in
place for the National Park Service to articulate clearly to
the appropriators that this is a bona fide need and here's how
we determine that and just recognizing there's a whole range of
how each park is in a different stage because we have a 5-year
goal to get that.
So each park is on a time schedule to get the assets in,
get the initial assessments and then get the most sophisticated
conditions assessed. So each park will have a little bit
different timeframe as well, and they are all on different
schedules.
Mr. Souder. Just so you know, I want to do this, I'm doing
this in a fair way, the administration understands that I'm a
Republican. I'm not hostile, I'm not interested in cutting off
Republican's debts. Others may, but I'm not, and I'm trying to
figure out how to address this in a realistic way.
My son actually works for the National Park Service, is now
in the Denver office and is working for ops, and so I
understand there's a lot of evaluation ongoing. And there's not
always an enthusiasm out of administration to share their
processes and how they do this process.
But what we need to kind of understand is what tradeoffs
are being made, and that's what we're trying to sort through
here. And we'll work with the regional director and with Steve
Martin and Fran Mainella because I don't want to get into the
situation like we get into in, quite frankly, with some other
agencies, it's not just in the Park Service, in trying to sort
out that so we understand, much like you said, an architect's
estimate may be different than the carpenter's estimate.
There are all sorts of levels here of trying to get a
handle just like there's additional funds in the Natural
Resource Challenge and America's historic treasures, but they
aren't really new funds. They were funds that were taken out of
your regular operating and backlog to create special target
funds.
And for us to understand that when we grade a category that
targets a good project, what does that do to this list of
projects you have or what does that do to raise your
interpretation or trail maintenance? Because to some degree, as
a former staffer I can say this, to some degree we need to
understand.
Mr. Reichert. I think I would be remiss to not recognize
the effort that the rangers put forth in securing another area
that's increased in your responsibilities as it has for all
local law enforcement, and having visited you and some of the
people who work for you, I know that puts additional stress and
strain on protection of the National Parks and people who
frequent the park system is also a major, major part of your
job.
And as my friend Mr. Baird said, we do have great respect
for the work that you do and very much appreciate the effort
with the limited resources and the great job you do, so thank
you.
Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Baird. Honorable Inslee.
Mr. Inslee. Thank you. Let me make a comment, but before
that, I want to thank your personnel. When you talk about trail
maintenance, how hard people work, I climbed Rainier last
summer, and it was incredible the work people had done to try
to keep climbers on the right trails so they don't trash all
the meadows going up.
You could see people that treated it like their kitchen
with such care. It was really amazing. We really appreciate the
personnel efforts.
The reason I say that is the sad fact is National Parks are
a mess. It's just a crying shame what is going on in our
National Parks. And this isn't from hearings. This is from my
personal observation. I go to Mesa Verde down in Colorado. It's
a mess. Paint is peeling off everything. The hand rails are
falling down. The trails going down to see the monuments are
closed because they are falling off the cliff faces.
You go to the climber's shack at Mt. Rainier National
Parks, paint falling off all over the place. If it was a
Holiday Inn, they would shut it down. You are losing trail
interpretive rangers by the score at Olympic National Park,
which I loved for my kids for an educational purpose. It's just
a crying shame what is going on.
And it's not because of what you are doing; it's what
Congress is not doing, which is funding the National Parks. And
the reason it's not doing it is it's sacrificing your budget on
the alternative tax cuts. And I hate to be the skunk at the
picnic party, but that's what is going on.
Now, I just want to ask a simple question: Are we funding
the National Parks? I will just ask you, Ms. Muldoon, if I can,
are we funding the National Parks in a way that we can say that
we'll hand our National Parks to our grandchildren in as good
of condition as we had when we grew up both in a physical
condition and with the services they provide? That's a softball
question.
Mr. Baird. You can see the high heat.
Ms. Muldoon. How about those Giants? Well, how do I answer
that? None of us are going to sit here and whine because
compared to other public land management agencies, we are doing
quite well.
Mr. Inslee. Well, would you disagree with me that we are
not cutting the mustard in funding our national parks?
Basically, if we continue the trajectory we are on, we'll hand
National Parks that are seriously degraded to our kids and our
grandchildren, both in their physical and biological system and
in the services we provide our people? Is that a fair
statement?
Ms. Muldoon. I think we've made some strides in the last
couple of years. We've had increases from Congress for
operating budgets across----
Mr. Inslee. If we have made strides, then why are we having
to cut rangers, seasonal rangers, in the Olympic National Park?
Why is that? Why do constituents go to Hurricane National Park
and other National Parks and rangers that we saw who had helped
do crowd control and keep people off the meadows and instruct
people on how the frogs and the trout work in the lakes, that
kids just love seeing a person in that uniform tell them what
is going on in the biosphere, why are those people not there if
we are doing such a good job?
Ms. Muldoon. We've absolutely lost purchasing power.
There's no doubt about that. As costs have gone up, operating
budgets haven't gone up every year. They have in the last two,
but they don't every year. So we have lost ground over many
years, I would have to say. Absolutely true.
We gained some ground in the Natural Resource Challenge, I
will say, because we do have a better handle now on our
resources than we did 5 years ago.
Mr. Inslee. If it came to a question of the people that you
serve in the National Parks whether to maintain the Cascade
National--or Cascade Pass Trail in a pristine condition or
whether to give more tax breaks to people earning over
$500,000, what do you think they would say.
Ms. Muldoon. I think I should defer that to the
superintendent.
Mr. Inslee. I will let him off the hook. He does too good
of a job. Let me ask you this serious question: On the
situation regarding this proposal to seriously change the
mission statement of the National Parks, we are very concerned
about this because as we understand it, the proposal is it will
change the definition of impairment to say right now you can't
cause impairment of the National Parks.
But as we understand it, the proposal is when you go and do
impairment, particularly for motorized vehicles, jet skis, four
wheelers, as long as it's, ``only temporary,'' cell phone
towers, goodness knows what, that is a major dimunition of our
commitment to the future generations to head in that direction.
We are very concerned about it.
Have you been involved in those discussions? And, if so,
what can you tell us about it?
Ms. Muldoon. I can tell you a little bit about that. You
know, I have worked for the service since 1985, and during that
time there have been two revisions of management policies. So
it's not an extraordinary thing that management policies get
revisited from time to time. It is extraordinary that the first
draft of management policies goes out to the public in any
circumstance no matter what they say because it's always kind
of a long, deliberative process. It goes through many
iterations.
So we've provided comments on the first draft, every region
has, and there's a group of Park Service professionals working
on that now. And my understanding is that we're working toward
a new draft. So that draft that was out there to begin with has
already changed and will undoubtedly change again, and the
director has made a commitment to take it out to the public and
have a good public debate about the management policies.
Mr. Inslee. And if you have any input in this decision,
will you report that back for the State of Washington, the
State of Washington believes it is a terrible idea to diminish
the preservative mission of the National Parks, to hand back
these most precious jewels in the Nation to our grandkids
unsullied on a permanent basis? Would you report back to Mr.
Hoffman to that effect?
Ms. Muldoon. Yes, sir.
Mr. Inslee. Thank you very much. Thank you. And by the way,
I made a comment about the painting in the climber's shack. I
met one of your painters back in DC. He's doing a great job.
We've just got to give him a little more help.
Mr. Uberuaga. I would like to comment on that, if I could.
There is an operational funding for the day-to-day operations
at Mt. Rainier. I want to just mention a couple things.
Last year, in 2004, we conducted a strategic organizational
review at Mt. Rainier to address our budget situation and
higher operating costs. We engaged all employees in what I call
a self-directed evaluation to develop the most effective
organization that we can at Mt. Rainier.
Again, looking at all the circumstances, what do we have
control over, what can we manage at Mt. Rainier versus all the
other things that are going on around us? We developed the 5-
year target organization that we could afford that retained
some of the front-line staff while we abolished supervisory
positions. We cut 3 percent a year or $275,000 a year for the
next 5 years recognizing a total cut of 15 percent or $1.4
million per year from then on for those 5 years and continuing
into the out-years.
In addition, we still have 10 permanent positions that are
vacant. We have filled most of these positions with non-
permanent, seasonal, temporary and term positions which reduces
our overall fixed costs, but at a price that will impact the
park's long-term employee retention and management succession.
Our seasonal operations, and this is paid for out of base
operations, has decreased 49 percent over the last 10 years.
And that's approximately 52 seasonal positions at Mt. Rainier.
Our permanent positions are down 7 percent, about eight
permanent positions.
What we have done in recent years with the deferred
maintenance program, is that we have shifted from a base funded
to deferred maintenance, if you will, backlog project based
funding. We have a substantial increase in our deferred
maintenance project funding and have hired term employees and
seasonals, and our project work force has increased by 75
percent.
So to speak to that, there is an impact on park operations.
Those are some of the specifics I have. And the trend is there
as well.
Mr. Inslee. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, would you allow me one more question? Thank you.
By the way, thanks for coming here to this hearing. We really
do appreciate your interest and leadership on this.
There is this proposal that we could go to, this voluntary
check-off system where you can check on your income tax to send
money to the National Parks. We do it for the Presidential
election right now.
And as the tenor of my comments have indicated, I think
we're in desperate need of funds for the National Parks, but I
think there is some cause for concern if we tend to move in the
direction of making National Parks kind of a volunteer system
that no longer is a national commitment insuring statute and
fiscal policy, but rather something that is like large bake
sales for the PTA. We don't do bake sales for the Pentagon. We
don't have check offs about buying, you know, airplanes.
And I'm a little concerned that this could diminish the
umph, if you will, at budget time to really get commitments for
provisions.
Mr. Baird. If I may respond.
Mr. Inslee. You bet.
Mr. Baird. I share that concern, but as the co-author of
the bill, admittedly this could be fudged, but the bill
specifically says the money that will be allocated in this
mechanism is going to be over and above the appropriations. So
this is meant to be an over and above resource. But now whether
or not the appropriators would say, ``In fact, we're getting X
amount of money through the Centennial Act, so, therefore, we
don't have to appropriate,'' that's our job in Congress to make
sure that doesn't happen.
Your point is well taken. The point is for us, the reality
on the ground and to some extent I think it's the case with fee
demo. Many people might wish we didn't have fee demo, but ask
any superintendent I know of, ``Could you make it without?''
The answer is no.
And so I think Mr. Souder and myself, I can't speak for the
chairman, but certainly we are cognizant of that. And our hope
is, and I think for me the kind of testimony we've heard today
and the kind of visual experience and personal on-the-ground
experience of the American people, they are going to say at
some point we actually want a mechanism to give more.
The American people look at the parks and say we see the
kind of impact you have been describing we have heard something
about today. They wish they could do something. Congress hasn't
stepped up to the plate. This is a way to empower them. I
personally, in supporting this bill, want to share your
concern, but say that will be part of our job to say we can't
start then cutting the appropriations because in view of the
Centennial Act revenue, if it comes about, would supplant that.
Mr. Inslee. The question is how can we diminish that
prospect that it could diminish our ability to win
appropriations? Do you have any advice for us on that? If we do
create this voluntary stream----
Mr. Souder. I don't think you have characterized it
correctly. If it was a check off, it would be over the Ways and
Means Committee. It's not a check off. It is a bill, and the
Resources Committee has jurisdiction because it will work
through this way. It's much more controversial than a check
off.
It is a set amount of money of which people can designate
from their own, and the Federal Government makes up the
shortfall, that's not likely to pass in that form, but that's
our goal to try to fight this debate.
This hearing isn't about that, but this hearing sets that
up. The second thing with it is that it's possibly a compromise
where individuals, unlike the Presidential campaign where you
can give a dollar or whatever, if a company gives $5,000, the
Federal Government would match it might be where we would go.
Right now it actually says the appropriation is bigger, and
then depending on how much people give, the government's
responsibility goes down over and above the budget. And that
fixed amount has a baseline Federal budget with a percent on it
and then this has to go above that. So that's how we're trying
to address it.
I don't think they need--I don't want to put the pressure
on them to try to get into how we should write the legislation,
but at the same time I think your basic question to them was
in--do they have enough, I think, is a legitimate thing to ask
them.
And then, sure, they are worried that all these private
things may replace baseline funding. I mean, that's always a
risk. But that's really for us to figure out. So their goal is
to get it from wherever they can get it.
Mr. Inslee. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Ms. Muldoon. Thank you.
Mr. Baird. I will follow with two observations: One, you
know, the history of the American National Parks I do not know
it well, but I spent a little bit of time studying it. Part of
this came about as a reference to this proposed management
plan. Part of the reason we have our National Parks is because
people looked at horror what had happened to Niagra Falls.
The history of the development of our natural park system
was Niagara Falls was a national and international treasure
that had been developed in some of the most garish and
outlandish ways through private enterprise trying to take
advantage of this.
And people from Europe particularly came over and Americans
came over to this region and looked at that Niagara Falls and
were astonished at how bad it looked. And there was a
realization that we must not let this happen to other natural
areas.
And interestingly at the time there was a certain envy on
American's part of European cultural history and their
religious monuments and the great churches. And we saw in
America, people at the time, an opportunity to do something
that was uniquely American and that our cathedrals were the
cathedrals of the Sequoia and the cathedrals of the canyons of
Yosemite and the great canyons of Yellowstone and the mountains
of Mt. Rainier.
That was our heritage and that was vital that we preserve
this. And as I read this new potential management plan, I think
we would be starting a step backward and the biggest step
backward in a long, long time toward the direction that we were
trying to avoid when we started the National Park Service.
And I just cannot underscore how important it is that we
not do that. It is a sad thing to me already that we have a
maintenance backlog. It is a sad thing that trails and
interpretive resources are lost.
But if we change the fundamental core mission of our
National Parks, eternal shame on us because you don't get it
back. You don't get it back. One thing----
[Pause.]
Mr. Baird. One thing I want to----
Mr. Souder. We can give speeches, but you can't applaud for
speeches.
Mr. Baird. We'll disregard that. But one thing that was
eluded to earlier, and I don't expect you to necessarily--I had
the occasion to bump into a couple of park rangers,
particularly the seasonal employees. I'm concerned about the
long-term morale of our service. There are a bunch of young
sprites out there today. I worry sincerely about this, that as
this generation of superintendents and park workers retire,
that the ability to fill that with career employees who see
ambiguity, uncertainty, change in mission, change in
responsibility, I think you run a morale risk. And we haven't
talked about it. We have talked about the money for the ground,
we have talked about the money for the trails, etc. I worry
about morale, and I worry about the incoming pipeline of the
dedicated Park Service employees.
I open it up if you want to talk about that, we can, but I
have talked to some folks who say, you know, this was my dream
to be a park ranger, and I have wondered now if I'm going to
have to abandon that dream.
Mr. Souder. What I would like to do is go to the second
panel. I was going to make a similar request of each of you.
Mr. Uberuaga referred to this career track, that would you
talk--if you could give us a written response to this direct
question for the record that we can have as to what you think
the impact is on recruitment of young people in the Park
Service in addition to the morale of the Park Service, is there
a career track.
If we can only have seniors in, and we all meet young
people who maybe give 7 to 10 years on temporary status----
Mr. Baird. Exactly.
Mr. Souder [continuing]. What is happening inside the
service? And is this going to impact the great people with
double degrees? Is this going to impact these people's patience
to do that as they try to figure out how to cover health care?
Just if you can, just spring forward as straightforward as
you can, this is what I see happening as opposed to
editorializing off of it, which could get into all kinds of
discussions. But this is under oath.
Mr. Baird. And particularly, if I may, Mr. Chair, is the
seasonal issue and the issue you raised regarding health care
because the seasonals who are not employed long enough to
receive health care? I think this raises particular challenges,
if you can talk about that in your comments.
Mr. Souder. And I'm going to give some other written
questions so we can match up the different hearings and do that
to some degree through the park office, through the regional
office, but particularly in this area of the upper Northwest,
could you give us how many permanent and seasonal staff the
region had 4 years ago as opposed to currently and any comments
you want to add to that.
We also have a question on the maintenance backlog and also
how the recreation fee is working in relationship to this. And
also if you could give me an idea, this is an area of huge
natural resource parks, but you also have lots of others that
you can refer to such as the Klondike headquarters.
And some of what is happening here is we are able to cover
the bigger parks better, but some of the small ones may be
getting lost in the system, but if you can give us some
indication of whether that's occurring as well.
And I want to say for the record, we're going to have
political differences, and Jay has referred back to the
question a couple times, I don't favor raising taxes. I favor
making some adjustments, and I don't believe they will solve
the problem. I think we can handle a legitimate disagreement
over that.
But from our perspective as the revenues have gone up, the
expenditures have soared. And most of it is entitlement
spending, and we have a huge challenge.
And I'm one who believes that we've gone too far in some of
the Park Service reductions. But it isn't going to be like the
old days. There aren't as many funds to restore the buildings
there. We are going to have to find more ways to be creative,
more self service, creative ways with the Internet.
Our school teachers around the country have a great
educational, cultural, scientific resource in the United
States, most of which probably have more actual original
artwork than our national art museums inside the system. But we
have to figure out different ways to do this because the
country is changing. What we have are the greatest resources we
have in America, and we can't let them get denigrated for the
next generations based on the challenges that we have.
And we'll try to work through our differences of how to do
that. But first we have to define what we have, what is
happening to it and how best to address this and raise the
awareness of Congress. Thank you for participating in that this
morning.
If the second panel can start to come forward, we'll take a
brief recess to give the stenographer a break.
[Recess.]
Mr. Souder. The subcommittee will come back to order. And
as you heard from the first panel, each witness has to be sworn
in. So if you will stand and raise your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Souder. Let the record show that each of the witnesses
have responded in the affirmative. Mr. J. Paul Malmberg is here
representing--he's a regional director, Washington State Parks,
Southwest Region. He's representing the Oregon and Washington
State Parks. And we'll get his testimony.
Let's start with you.
STATEMENTS OF J. PAUL MALMBERG, REGIONAL DIRECTOR, WASHINGTON
STATE PARKS, SOUTHWEST REGION; SALLY JEWELL, TRUSTEE, NATIONAL
PARKS CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION; REX DERR, DIRECTOR, WASHINGTON
STATE PARKS AND RECREATION COMMISSION; TIM WOOD, DIRECTOR,
OREGON STATE PARKS; RUSS DICKENSON, FORMER DIRECTOR, NATIONAL
PARK SERVICE; AND ROD FLECK, CITY ATTORNEY/PLANNER, FORKS, WA
STATEMENT OF J. PAUL MALMBERG
Mr. Malmberg. Thank you. Chairman Souder, members of the
committee, my name is Paul Malmberg. I'm regional director for
the Southwest Region, Washington State Parks and Recreation
Commission. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you
today. I am pleased to be able to testify on behalf of both
Washington State Parks and Oregon State Parks. We like to think
that our joint testimony is an example of the cooperative,
seamless two-State park system, as taught by the National Park
Service.
We are pleased today to be able to give you an overview of
some of Washington's major Centennial 2013 goals and to
describe our involvement with a variety of Federal, State and
non-profit organizations and partnerships.
Washington State's Parks System is 93 years old.
Established in 1913, we are the Nation's second oldest State
parks system. In 7 years, our system of 120 parks and 260,000
acres will be 100 years old. With our Centennial in mind, the
seven member State Parks Commission created our Centennial 2013
plan. This plan is a framework to position and guide the agency
as it enters the next 100 years. It is a bold plan that focuses
on renewed commitment to traditional roles, pushing the
envelope for future plans and actively connecting with our most
important resource: Engaged communities.
The Centennial 2013 Plan has three parts. First, six
renewed commitments to our major activities: To stewardship,
the protection and preservation of natural historical and
cultural resources; to quality, the added value of
participation in our parks; to our employees, to equip them
with a strong customer service ethic; to partnerships, at all
levels to leverage scarce resources beyond status quo to
improve the park experience; and to its stable funding source.
The second feature of our plan is leaving a legacy. This is
the plan's bold part. It is not only business as usual or the
status quo, it is asking for $100 million--yes, $100 million--
as an up-front investment to kick start the first phase of our
plan and leave a legacy for the next generation of park users.
And we're asking partners to buy into this legacy with money,
muscle and organizational resources.
The third leg of our Centennial Plan is 100 connections.
This part is the community-based part; the part where local
citizens make local investments to improve local State parks.
This phase is a natural channel for the passion people have for
parks.
Now I'd like to go a little more into partnerships, that
key feature in the 2013 plan that some of our people refer to
as ``park-nerships.'' Partnerships are a key element of
Centennial 2013, in all three areas, commitment, legacy and 100
connections. In building on existing and forming new
partnerships, we realize the value of leverage, the extra boost
that individual, group and governmental linkages can give our
State parks.
Partnerships are the win/win feature of our plan. The
partners win by giving to the communities, by succeeding in
business by doing good. Of course, parks win, too. In an era of
dwindling resources, we can tap into the muscle that makes our
country great: People power. These benefits from partners are
not only tangible bricks and mortar or interpretive shows, they
are goodwill and the seal of public approval of well-invested
tax dollars.
Washington State Parks' view of partnership is not only
people power. The view encompasses more--remember, we're
thinking boldly here. So our plan will work on attracting
corporate sponsorships, foundation support from Boeing,
Starbuck's, Seattle's Bullitt Foundation. We are trying for
major investments that make a difference.
Now that you have an idea of what we think partnerships
are, let me outline a few of our most important ones to date.
The first is our work with the National Park Service, Oregon
State Parks and other local jurisdictions at the Lewis and
Clark National and State Historic Park on both sides of the
Columbia River as it flows into the Pacific Ocean. Working
collaboratively with the National Park Service as a marketing
and management partner, using the National Park Service Web
site, Oregon State Parks, through a number of State parks,
including Fort Stevens, and Washington State Parks, through a
number of State parks, including Cape Disappointment, offer a
variety of cultural, historical and natural park experience in
a seamless delivery system.
A second collaboration is referred to as WORP, or
Washington Oregon Recreation Pass, where both Oregon and
Washington State Parks teamed up with the National Park
Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers to pilot a ``one pass fits all'' endeavor.
Visitors can use this one pass to enter national parks in the
region, park at forest service trailheads, use BLM lands and
certain Corps of Engineers parks, and park for free in selected
Oregon and Washington State parks. This one-pass experiment is
a fine example of strong customer service and the seamless park
system we all aspire to.
A third example of symbiotic partnerships is the Grand
Coulee National Recreation Area. There in Central Washington,
the Federal land management agencies, the National Park Service
and Washington State Parks work together for a top-notch Ice
Age Floods interpretive experience. The floods occurred 12,000
years ago and carved up dramatic landscapes in a four-State
area.
Another example of a successful partnership is the
Northwest Discovery Water Trail that runs from Canoe Camp on
the Clearwater River in Idaho, down the Snake and Columbia
Rivers to Bonneville Dam in the Columbia Gorge National Scenic
Area, providing kayak, canoe and boating experiences to outdoor
enthusiasts from Washington, Oregon, Idaho and visitors from
all over the country. The trail is a collaboration of 33
different agencies and jurisdictions. As we like to say, the
Northwest Discovery Water Trail is the proof of the partnership
pudding.
In addition to the Northwest Discovery Trail, the Lewis &
Clark National and State Historic Park, and the Washington
Oregon Recreation Pass mentioned above, Oregon State Parks
provides another fine partnership example in their cooperative
effort with the National Park Service in providing the Fort-to-
Sea Trail from Fort Clatsop to the Pacific. It's an example of
a joint park/trail management borne through partnerships.
There are other examples in operating public information
officers, coastal management, long-distance rails-to-trails
management and coordination of training for cultural/historical
resource interpretation they portend well for future endeavors
that leverage the resources at all levels--Federal, State, and
local, but time does not permit a detailed description.
As concluding remarks, on behalf of Washington and Oregon,
I cannot emphasize this final point enough: As Federal
resources dwindle or are directed toward recent reconstruction
efforts, these Federal, State, private and non-profit
partnerships become more and more crucial to our joint mission.
We view our collaborative past as a great asset and maybe even
a ``best-kept secret,'' and we will continue to view our joint
future as equally valuable as a key 21st century asset
necessary for the success in our mutual, collaborative park-
based missions.
Thank you on behalf of the Oregon State Parks and
Washington State Parks. I hope these remarks will help you in
your future deliberations. We wish you all well.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Malmberg follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Our next witness is Sally Jewell, the CEO of
REI, I think the favorite store both online and directly of my
two sons.
STATEMENT OF SALLY JEWELL
Ms. Jewell. Great. Then I don't have to explain REI. Thank
you very much, Mr. Chairman. I especially thank you for
traveling out here to meet in our neck of the woods. I think
the view you have behind me is indicative of the kinds of
things that our citizens like to do in terms of protecting open
spaces and beautiful areas amidst growing urbanizing areas. And
we're in, I think, Representative Reichert's district, and you
know what a struggle that is. So thank you. I thank
Representatives Inslee and Baird, as well as Reichert, for
being here as well.
REI is--it's great to know it's your sons' favorite store.
We are now in 25 States. We'll have 82 stores by the end of the
year, and we are hopeful we'll cross $1 billion in sales. So it
is not a small business. We employ 7,000 taxpayers in those 25
States.
But that's not why I'm here today. I'm here really as a
trustee for the National Parks Conservation Association [NPCA],
which I will be talking about a little bit.
Unlike the individuals on the panel before us, my salary is
not paid by the Federal Government, and I am free to speak as a
citizen. And so I will start by answering Representative
Inslee's question, which is we are not leaving our parks in the
same condition as we inherited them from our parents. And I'm
preaching to the choir here. The four of you know that we have
challenges that we have to solve.
So one of the functions of the NPCA, which was formed in
1919, I believe the same year the National Park Service was
founded, was to be able to speak out like I can speak out as a
private citizen in favor of protecting the National Parks for
future generations unencumbered and in the condition that we
inherited them. That is the role of the NPCA. We have over
300,000 members and people sign up voluntarily to support the
organizations through the contributions to do exactly this,
which is to advocate for not just the natural resources we've
heard so much about, but the historical and cultural heritage
of these wonderful places.
I'm also a founding board member of the Mountains to Sound
Greenway, which is in primarily Representative Reichert's
district and basically runs from the mountains to the sound
along I-90. We're sitting in it now. And I'm on the board of
the University of Washington Board of Regents and also served
on the State of Washington Governor's Competitiveness Council
looking at what we need to do within this State to remain
competitive.
Before REI, I have 20 years in the banking industry so I
have kind of a varied background and know the complexities that
you must face every day in trying to figure out how to deal
with limited resources to do good things.
I'm an immigrant to this country. One of my first memories
coming here with my family in 1959 was of hiking the Carbon
River, an amazing area. Later on as a child, I did a 100-mile
trek across the Olympic Mountains coming out in Dosewallips,
which actually I tried to visit yesterday, but the road was
washed out, I guess it has been for a number of years on U.S.
Forest Service land.
But we live in an amazing place here, and there are amazing
places like this across the country. As a child growing up, my
family went to many National Parks mostly in the west, and we
always went to the ranger chats. And seeing rangers dressed
very similarly, actually a little bit dressed down from our
superintendents here today, but still they had the uniform of
the National Park Service, and that meant a lot to me as a
child, as I'm sure it did to a number of you.
It came a little closer to home this year. My son is
actually a volunteer climbing ranger at Mt. Rainier National
Park. He hasn't run into Dave Uberuaga very much. He's down the
totem pole quite a bit, actually quite a bit of time spent
volunteering on the trails and swinging a pick ax and other
things.
But I've had, besides a lot of Rainier dust to clear out
about every week when he brings his pile of dirty laundry home,
I've had a lot of opportunity to talk to him about what it's
like to work in the parks. And there is a shift. There is a
shift away from interpretive rangers. There are no where near
as many as there once were. The NPCA put out a report called
Endangered Rangers, and I know you are all familiar with that.
Representative Dicks brought it up at I think it was an
Interior Appropriations Subcommittee or Appropriations
Committee, raising the issue of the reduction in the number of
rangers available to do interpretive programs.
My husband and I a year and a half ago went to Yosemite. Of
course, we went to all the chats that we could get to, and none
of them were put on by rangers. They were all put on by
contractors. And it's just not the same.
So I know that when I think about the experiences I had as
a child compared to the experiences my children have right now,
it is different.
My son's roommate has been a ranger at Olympic National
Park and now Rainier National Park, and he is an interpretive
ranger, back country ranger, but he's taking the law
enforcement classes that now one needs to do to move ahead in
the park. So the shift from interpretation toward law
enforcement is also very true in the parks as they work on
security issues, not the things, perhaps, that we traditionally
associate with rangers, although, that is an important
component.
These park rangers inspired in me a love of nature, respect
for culture and also through a lot of our historical parks the
sacrifices that our forbearers made in shaping the country. So
I hope we can get back to that and not just have them babysat
until somebody gets out to help encourage future generations to
appreciate what we have.
Funding challenges are increasingly evident in the parks
that I visit. I reference those a little bit. I think that you
all are aware of it, and I will try to not repeat the testimony
I just heard, so I will scale back on a fair amount of it. I do
have two tables that are in my written testimony. One talks
about the base operating budget of each of the 14 national park
sites in Washington and Oregon and where they were in 2004,
2005 and 2006 and what the increases in those budgets were, and
in addition there's a table on the economic impacts of the
National Park System in the northwest, and they are
substantial.
There is chronic underfunding in our National Parks. You
are aware of it. Chairman Souder and Representative Baird have
co-sponsored the National Parks Centennial Act. We applaud
that. The NPCA is fully in support of that, and we really
appreciate your effort to move that forward.
This is not a Republican or a Democratic issue. This is an
American problem. It spans every part of the political
spectrum. And I just appreciate the courage that you all have
to sign onto that bill and to try and move it forward.
Business plans that were developed in over 70 National
Parks across the Nation show that on average parks operate with
only two thirds of the funding that they need. That adds up to
a system-wide deficit of $600 million annually, so it's no
surprise that the annual operation budgets have not kept pace
with the need. And we heard about that from the individuals a
few minutes ago.
Increased security demands, as I mentioned, are an issue.
The years following September 11th, a number of the resources
from our National Parks here have been sent to help protect
places like the Golden Gate Bridge and Statue of Liberty.
That's all coming out of the local budgets, and they are having
to absorb these unbudgeted costs.
Chairman Souder mentioned in his opening remarks the cost
of living adjustments that are mandated, but when the budgets
don't keep up with those cost of living adjustments, it means
you scale back a number of people, and that's exactly what is
happening.
We've also heard about storm damage. I think that's true in
many National Parks, not just the ones here. These are wild and
wooly places, and they are costly to maintain.
I won't even get into oil prices because that's going to
impact every part of our economy, but it certainly impacts the
National Parks with all of the vehicles they have to maintain
to run it.
When we look at the Pacific Northwest budgets at a glance,
only 2 of the 14 park sites in the Northwest are slated for
base increases which are above the rate of inflation, and
that's all identified in that table that I mentioned in the
upcoming 2006 budgets. On average, the parks are going to get
an increase of 2.6 percent compared to inflation of 3.1
percent--(Telephone interruption.) That's an obnoxious ring.
But because inflation is higher than what the Parks'
budgets are, we are continuing to have the same struggles. I do
want to recognize, however, that in 2005, there was a
significant increase, and we really appreciate that, and you
can see that in the tables.
It's going to take a sustained effort to increase the
annual funding. It's not going to be annual appropriations
alone, and it's going to require public/private partnerships.
We heard a little bit about some partnerships in the State
parks, and we'll talk in a minute about something REI is doing
and a number of folks like us, but it's not the only solution.
So let me talk just briefly and even more briefly than I
intended to about two of our premiere Pacific Northwest area
parks, and that's Mt. Rainier and Olympic.
At Mt. Rainier National Park, it's an active volcano. REI's
distribution center, all the stuff that your sons order through
mail order, comes from a distribution center in Sumner, WA.
It's on the volcano evacuation route to Mt. Rainier. There are
actually signs that say that Mt. Rainier blows this way.
There is no full-time volcanologist on staff at Mt. Rainier
National Park. It's the kind of thing we think they should have
given the uniqueness of that particular asset.
We heard from Dave Uberuaga about the deferred maintenance.
I had in excess of $100 million. He said $168 a few minutes
ago. Mt. Rainier has better information than the other parks.
We talked about that. The strategic operational review in 2004
found that the flat budgets, higher operating costs and the
increased work loads were factors stressing the park, and they
went through that very effectively.
If you want to just cut to the quick, in constant dollars,
inflation adjusted, the Parks 2004 budget of $9 and a quarter
million have been flat lined since the last increase at 1997.
And that is, I think, pretty indicative of other parks as well.
We appreciate Representative Reichert getting out there. I
thought you were operating a chainsaw. I guess not. But at
least that's what was reported.
Mr. Reichert. That's a little scary.
Ms. Jewell. But for those of us who do get out and
volunteer in the Parks, you get a real sense of just how hard
the work is to maintain these things, how critical the
volunteers are, but also how critical good staff is to be able
to get the job done effectively.
Olympic National Parks: a million acres, 65 miles of
shoreline. It's an amazing, amazing park. Part of the work of
the NPCA is to do reports called the State of the Parks. They
are working their way around the country, but they have done
Olympic. And they put in place a rating scale about how
effectively the park is able to support and steward its
resources, natural, cultural, historic.
Unfortunately, Olympic National Park rated a poor 59 out of
100 on that score card, and that is not at all because the
staff is not running like squirrels in a cage doing as much as
they can. And we heard from Bill, and the staff does incredible
work out there. But it's just because there aren't enough of
them.
The health of Olympic National Park is threatened by an
annual shortfall of about $6 million just in the base budget
funding. So we talked about Elwha dam. This is just the basic
operations.
This was a shocking statistic to me and perhaps improved a
little bit, Bill, in 2005, but the number of seasonal rangers
was reduced from 130 in 2001, to only 25 in 2004. The seasonal
rangers are the backbone of these programs. Those are the
people you run into in the back country. Those are the people
you rely on to answer your question or to call for help if you
have an injury.
And 2 years ago, in addition, funding shortfalls threatened
to close the visitors center in Forks, and I suspect Rod Fleck
will be talking a little bit about that. But these are--it's
not only critical for protecting the resources, it's an engine
of an economy that otherwise has survived on timber harvest and
is changing, you know, for the good, I think, in large part
because of Olympic National Park. It won't be if we can't
maintain those resources.
NPCA recently collected 5,000 comment cards at various
parks from park visitors. This is just this past summer. And I
thought I was going to have a box of them. I guess not----
Mr. Souder. It's there.
Ms. Jewell. Oh, it's there. All right. I can't see it, but
there's a box. I'm told there's a box; 5,000 personalized
comments from park visitors, and, you know, not unlike the four
of you who expressed your comments earlier, they're very
engaged in National Park issues. They care a lot about it, and
they expressed a great deal of concern for the parks.
I'm just going to read a few of the quotes. David of
Kirkland, WA, ``Along with the wilderness areas, the National
Parks are all we have left. Future generations will judge our
efforts in whether we sit around or preserve these areas.''
From Jonathan of Vancouver, WA. Gee, it just happens to be
in your district. What do you know? ``The National Parks
provide historical information. They also promote tourism which
helps stimulate the local economies.''
And from Joseph and Margaret Miller from right here in
Bellevue, ``We worked from the late 1950's to 1968 for the
establishment of North Cascades National Park. Upon our
retirement in 1970, we worked as unpaid volunteer biological
researchers for the National Park Service. We feel that the
current lack of funding is undoing much of this work.''
So that is very indicative of the comments that were in the
5,000 folks that chose to participate in supporting the kinds
of things that you know.
I want to talk just a minute about public private/
partnerships and specifically REI just by way of example, but
there are many other examples. Just as increased public funding
is critical to the health of natural parks, private dollars
through partnerships also play a critical role. We have done a
number of things with the Park Service just to indicate to you
some of the examples out there.
Last year, REI donated $100,000 to support the National
Parks Volunteerism and Enhancement Program, and that was
through the National Park Foundation. Specifically we took 130
volunteer projects and narrowed them down to 22 that we could
fund and then provided funding to support the volunteer efforts
to do that. So bringing those folks into the park to do good
work that you heard our superintendents talk about a little bit
ago.
Over the last few years, we supported sales of the National
Park Pass in our stores, and in addition we did a shirt
promotion with all of our employees that had a ranger on the
front, you know, raising awareness of the National Parks and
the National Parks Pass, the work of the foundation and
supporting parks overall.
In addition, we did custom artwork for several of the
National Parks and with the proceeds going to support those
parks.
We've also supported something called Japan Volunteer in
the Parks Program at Mt. Rainier. The country of Japan provides
volunteer students to come over and work in our National Parks
every year, something that maybe we could be doing as well.
The public places a really high value on the National
Parks, and while REI is a private organization and other
philanthropies are more than willing to partner with the Park
Service, it has to be clear that the role of philanthropists
and businesses like ours should provide the margin of
excellence, not the margin of survival. We should provide the
margin of excellence, not the margin of survival.
When the private sector sees the funding that it's doing
supplanting the resources that we should be providing as a
country, you can bet that firms are going to retreat and say,
``Wait a minute. This isn't right.'' And I think that's so
critical. It's just too big for any philanthropist or any
private individual or company to do. We have to work hand in
hand.
I have talked briefly about the benefits, economic
benefits. Just to quote a few statistics, according to the
National Park Service, overall in the country, the National
Parks generate about $11 billion in economic impacts each year.
That's 226,000 tourism-related jobs in local economies, as well
as lots of positive economic impacts on those economies.
I gave you the table. More than 8 million tourists visited
the National Parks in the State of Washington and Oregon in
2003. They spent over $250 million, created over 6,700 jobs and
generated over $100 million in income to our communities, and I
suspect Rod is going to talk a little bit about his own
community and its impact.
So in conclusion, the work you are doing is good work. It's
important work. We have to fund these parks. We have to find a
way to do it.
I know that this is a time of sadness in our country. I
know that there will be many resources that are directed toward
the hurricane-damaged areas. It's just like private
philanthropy, we can't allow other things, other needs in our
country, to go unmet as we respond to this catastrophe. I
really think we need to do both. And I so applaud the work you
are doing in raising awareness with the National Parks
Centennial Act and having these hearings out here and listening
to how important these treasured resources are for all of us.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Jewell follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Our next witness is Mr. Russ Dickenson, a
former director of the National Park Service. Roger Kennedy was
at our last hearing up in Boston, and we appreciate you giving
us kind of the oversight of having been in the system and your
willingness to speak out today.
STATEMENT OF RUSSELL E. DICKENSON
Mr. Dickenson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the
committee. My name is Russ Dickenson. I'm retired from the
National Park Service. I live in Bellevue, WA. And I might say
at my age and with the amount of experience I've had, I'm
history. After World War II service as a Marine, I entered the
National Park Service in 1946 as a park ranger at Grand Canyon.
During my 39 years with NPS, I held many different positions in
parks coast to coast as a ranger, chief ranger, superintendent,
regional director of two regions, one of which was the Pacific
Northwest, deputy director of the service under Director No. 7
and 8 and became the 11th Director of the service for 5 years
in 1980 to 1985. As director, I served under two Presidents,
President Carter and Reagan.
Following my retirement, I served 4 years on the Secretary
of Interior's National Park System Advisory Board and 15 years
as the board member of Eastern National, which is a nonprofit
operating association which supports the Eastern National park
areas and their interpretive and educational projects.
I've been able to keep reasonably abreast of NPS issues and
programs. And one of my fundamental beliefs is that the
National Parks and historic areas have a special place in our
culture and in the hearts and minds of the American people. So
it has been really disappointing in recent years that an
adequate level of support from the Department and Congress has
not always been forthcoming.
When I was director, we had a park restoration and
improvement program which devoted $1 billion over a 5-year
period to park resources and facilities. It was a magic time.
In the 20 years since I've left, the backlog and maintenance
and needed improvements have gradually increased I have been
told to an estimated range of $4\1/2\ billion to $9 billion,
and the available operational dollars are also inadequate.
Many visitors are not having a fully satisfactory park
visit. Fewer rangers, fewer interpreters, fewer information
personnel at visitor centers and reduced hours, trail walks
fewer, fewer camp grounds, etc.
An adequate operating budget at the park level at each park
is critical to fixing the problem. The Park Service has some of
the most talented and dedicated people you would hope to find
in any institution or profession, but they need help. The
capacity of park superintendents, rangers and staff to do the
job that Congress and the American people expect is being
steadily eroded and the morale along with it.
There is not a park in the Pacific Northwest that isn't
being forced to leave important jobs undone or staff positions
unfilled because of insufficient operating income. Despite the
fiscal year 2006 increase in $50 million in base funding for
total NPS, 13 of the 15 park units in the Pacific Northwest
will receive funding that fails to keep up with inflation.
The work Congressman Dicks and others of you have done to
direct additional resources to Park Service operations is
admirable and sorely needed, but I believe we are at another
point in our national history when we must reinvest in our
National Park System. We did it during the 1930's depression.
Remember the CCC era and the magnificent improvements in
National Parks that occurred, again after World War II during
the Eisenhower Mission 66 program, and I was very much a part
of that, and it gave a boost that we can see to this day.
It is time to consider a reinvestment program again.
Anything less simply won't get the job done. The National Parks
need the kind of leadership and attention that you, Mr.
Chairman, and each Member of Congress may help provide.
I hope that my 10-year-old great grandson with his
developing appreciation of the natural world and the National
Parks will look back on this time as the turning point when our
Nation, despite all our problems foreign and domestic, chose to
save and enhance these wonderful world-renowned natural and
historical areas keeping these areas unspoiled for generations
to come.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Dickenson follows:]
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Mr. Baird. Mr. Chairman, I need to ask your indulgence. I
have to catch a flight back to the other Washington. I would
like to just thank the panelists. I regret that I can't be here
for any of the questioning, but thank you for your service. And
thanks again to the folks who have joined us today.
And thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for hosting this and to
my colleagues for their work. Thank you. I apologize I have to
step out.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
Our next witness today is Rod Fleck from Forks, WA, talking
about the community impacts. I appreciate you being here today.
STATEMENT OF WILLIAM R. FLECK
Mr. Fleck. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the
subcommittee. My name is Rod Fleck. I'm the city attorney and
planner for Forks, WA. Mayor Reed, I'm standing in for her. She
extends her regrets. She's at a 50th class reunion. She will
make it very clear for me to point out it's for her husband,
not her.
And I apologize to Sally because the phone that went off. I
believe it is my 4-year-old telling me about her first day at
preschool.
So it's a great honor, and I appreciate the honor to
testify. I have two records in my written testimony that I
submit for you in your consideration. I will refer to those a
little bit later.
Forks is a wonderful community. It's in a remarkable State.
And I will say in one of the longest footnotes you probably
have ever seen, I give you my love for this State and all the
wonders in it. We are a small rural city out on the Olympic
peninsula about 3 hours and a ferry ride away from here. It's
3,200 people there that call it home. We are the hub in a 2,000
square mile area with 12,000 people. We're rural. We are
remote. We are unique for our salmon, our salamanders, our
forests and our beaches. Oh, yeah, we get a lot of rain, so
much so that we measure it in feet.
And as a rural community, we understand the functions of
our various land managers. Some lands are for timber production
and others are for recreation. And I'm here to talk about the
recreation and its role. Tourism is a conscious part of our
diverse location efforts and our local economy.
The Olympic National Park sites that we have around us
within about 20 minutes include lakes, mountains, beaches and
rivers. They're huge draws and have huge economic impact.
On the peninsula alone, the estimates are that there's
about $91 million spent by tourists visiting our region every
year; $41 million generates jobs and personal income to the
families of my neighbors. Diane Schostak, our Forks Chamber of
Commerce director, I once asked her, ``What is the estimate of
the tourism segment into our sector of employment?'' She goes,
``I would say, minimum, it's 1 out of 10, and it's probably a
lot higher than that,'' in just our little town of Forks.
Up until 2004, though, we took our parks for granted, and
we weren't alone. They are always there. And we then started
hearing of service local adjustments that would include changes
to the Forks Visitor Center. It's a unique relationship that
the Park and the Forest Service have and a transit center that
was paid for by Federal dollars, and the suggestion was that it
was going to have to be closed.
Well, that caught our attention. We are known to be very
vocal in our little community. And we started working with the
National Park Conservation Association and others to say we're
not sure we should have our superintendents having to make
these decisions about what do I fund here because I can't
absorb the cost of increases in fuel, health care, things like
that.
We started to learn a lot about the Park and the Park
Service. We also in 2004 watched something that I think every
American deserves to be proud of, and that was the bipartisan
level of leadership by you, Mr. Chairman, your colleague
Representative Baird, Congressman Dicks, Representative Taylor,
Representative Inslee and Representative Larsen and others to
work across the aisle to find solutions in the leadership and
funding. We're extremely grateful in our little community. We
don't get to tell you guys that often. You probably hear us
complain about things. But we are extremely grateful for that.
But we also learned that NPS has challenges. Now, it is not
easy for a citizen to travel the park system, the park service.
I will say I am a pretty good researcher in a lot of odd little
things. The Park Service is difficult to figure out and ferret
information out about.
What I can say is that while the budgets remained
relatively stable in Olympic National Park in fiscal year 2001,
there are 202 FTE billed there. In fiscal year 2004, there are
177 billed there. They did get additional visitors' support,
and Superintendent Laitner uses that very, very wisely. There
is no waste. There is no over excess in our National Park
Service when it comes to these people's hands in the field.
They can take a penny and get you probably 2 or 3 cents on
whatever you give them in time and dedication.
But those changes and those shifts in the FTE impact our
infrastructures and our visitors. Visitors in their parks
expect what I expect in classrooms, smaller tour sizes, safe
and clean structures and open facilities, yet the budgets are
not meeting all those costs. Superintendent Laitner and others
are having to triage maintenance between trails, buildings,
roads, camp sites, sometimes just making sure the septic system
at the Hoh is functional that week. They are also seeing
overloaded staff, and those reductions are having impact on
everything from law enforcement to interpretive services.
In that role, you see a reliance on volunteers. I've seen
it in the last year. I've been traveling and asking people at
parks from Chilcote, OH, to Spotsylvania to Gettysburg to the
Olympics. Volunteers are great resources, but we need to
caution the NPS to use these wonderful folks to supplement, not
supplant trained staff, especially the law enforcement folks. I
don't want to criticize volunteers because they are a godsend.
They should be adequately noted and given the recognition they
deserve, and in my written testimony I talk about a couple
examples where that's not the case. I appreciate REI making the
effort to overcome that.
In addition, sponsorship should augment but not supplant
National Park Service operations and maintenance and avoid
costly shifts to local governments and entities. That is one of
the questions that came up, could the city of Forks maybe
absorb some of these costs or help us cost share this. With all
due respect, sir, my city can just get by. We don't have a
luxury of doing that. We would love to. We just don't have that
ability. There's a lot of other small little communities like
that.
In the letter I provided from the 20 chambers of commerce
around the Northwest, there are many little communities just
like Forks from Sedro-Woolley to Concrete and others that just
don't have those resources, even though we rely upon the parks
for its economic development and stability, 8 million visitors
in 1 year generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue
for our little communities.
The other thing I would like to talk about real quickly as
an example is the Hoh Visitors Center. It's a neat little
place. The staff there are the hardest working people I have
ever met in my life. And to be candid, it's a Mission 66
vintage visitors center. It was built during the Kennedy
administration. And yes, Superintendent, I can say that it's
older than me. It was built for about 15,000 to 20,000 visitors
a year. Today it receives 260,000 people a year. In August
alone, it received 70,000 people a year.
I don't want to get into septic engineering and all those
things, but I can tell you that is a problem at the very base
level in the park there.
And it's just not built for the use it gets. I was up there
with a person a week and a half ago, and we walked in with 15
people, and it was a crowded facility. I think it's smaller
than the open area we're in right now, including the offices,
for 260,000 people, 70,000 people in August. Start doing the
math by hour, and you can start to see you become very close
friends with a lot of people.
It also doesn't have some of the things that I have seen in
other visitor centers, a lecture area, a movie area, things
like that. I'm not saying it's bad, it just needs some
assistance. They are keeping it in wonderful shape. Truly 140
some inches of rain can do damage to a lot of buildings, you
can only imagine, and these folks have kept that place up. It
is a remarkable effort they undertake.
Our community, our city, adopted a resolution which I have
provided you that supports the National Park Centennial Act. We
appreciate your leadership on that and Representative Baird. We
think that is the way to have the citizens participate and say
we care about this. In return, in our dollars we gain back, we
would like to take some of that and give it back and say deal
with this.
From preserving artifacts at Gettysburg to the Olympic
National Park's beach trails, my family will put some small sum
in there if we are fortunate to get a return that year.
That money can also deal with invasive species. That hasn't
been talked about, but in our area Knotweed is a tenacious weed
that has slowly been creeping into the salmon bearing bred
areas. We need to deal with those and have additional funding
for the Park Service. The Park Service has been a leader in
that effort. I commend Mr. Laitner for that, but he needs to
have the resources to make that invasive species no longer a
part of our problem.
And we need to ensure that we stabilize our Parks as our
Nation needs to grow and change over the years to come. We'll
stay involved, and you will probably keep hearing from us,
right or wrong.
And then finally I just want to point out we brought for
each one of you, because we knew you couldn't make it to Forks,
a little token from Forks saying thank you. A friend of mine,
Pat Boyle, and the folks at Hoh River wanted to make sure I
brought these for you guys and said if you are ever out our
way, we'll ensure that you have a wonderful visit.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Fleck follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Let me make a couple comments. I have a few
questions, I will yield and then finish up with some follow-up
to my initial comments here.
First off, on the question of whether or not volunteering
private donations, demonstration fees are replacing or
supplementing, it's been interesting. I have never heard, Jay
may have heard here and there, and quite frankly it's
mysterious to almost everybody exactly how the appropriations
process works, even members of the Appropriations Committee and
the Speaker's office. But I've never heard a discussion of
anything replacing.
In fact, one of the biggest challenges when we do our
annual letter where we ask them to increase Parks funding, and
I think Congressman Lewis has been one of the leaders of that,
but we kind of work together with NPCA in trying to target what
is a workable number that can be just higher than they will
possibly go but then try to leverage it, and Congressman Dicks
does the best he can inside appropriations to make that happen
on the Democratic side, and we work with our leadership.
The pleading we usually get is from the Fish & Wildlife
Service and from other agencies inside Interior. Quite frankly,
any vote we take for Parks, it will just come straight out of
the Department of Interior, that our challenge is not so much--
I've never heard, ``Oh, they are getting all these funds,''
it's that, ``If you don't put those funds in, the parks just
won't have those people. There won't be volunteers. There won't
be as many visitor centers open. Without the demonstration
fees, we wouldn't have the dollars.''
It's not like we're making a calculation saying, ``Oh, we
can cover this in the private sector.'' It just isn't there.
But putting up markers that show how short the Park Service is
helps keep that from happening because it's, I believe right
now, a theoretical problem. But we're so panicked. It's much
like in New Orleans, the fact that private relief is going in
isn't supplanting what we are going to do in the Federal
Government because we can't possibly meet all the needs
combined together. And I think that's more of a question there.
I have some strong personal frustration with local and
State leaders, and I'm just going to say this flat out. Don't
talk to me about your problems with revenues. Your total
deficits together in all of America don't equal ours. Don't ask
the Federal Government to increase taxes if you won't increase
taxes. The fact is that there are the same revenue sources at
the local level as there are with us, and that's to raise
taxes.
It is a terrible problem we all have. Nobody wants to elect
anybody from either party, with the exception of Jay, who is
going to increase taxes, and he is targeting his to a small
group. A broad group does not want to pay tax increases. They
all think they can get something for nothing.
And that we're in this together, and we're going to have to
jump together, but the fact is our deficits are bigger
proportionally. The only difference is we can print money,
which inflates it and causes interest rates to change.
So when we look at what is happening in the world, we'll
just appropriate the money and print extra dollars so we can
backdoor a tax increase, which you all can't do at the State
and local level. But in these partnerships, we have to figure
out how to do this.
Now, one thing in Washington that is kind of interesting,
you have more visitor centers at Mt. St. Helen's I think than
you have at the whole rest of the State, which is another
challenge. It's not the Park Service, but it is an illustration
of some of the challenges we face based on how many access
points there are.
The pass system, I was just amazed this summer when I saw
first in Oregon that different agencies were actually
cooperating in a pass because as we put these fees in, if we
don't work together, the average consumer in the United States
is just appalled because they pay one fee and then they pay
another fee and then they pay another fee, and the systematic
way of working together is great.
I would like your brain power to be put in this. We don't
have to do this today, and we are going to put anything you
want to submit for the record, your full testimony will go in,
in addition to what is indeed the longest footnote I have ever
seen in Mr. Fleck's testimony, but if you want to submit
anything else. But we're looking for suggestions.
And one of the problems with these fees is how to address
this with lower income people because in my opinion the public
support for the fees is there as long as they see it being used
actually for the parks. The authorizing committee already
signed off on trying to address these free for low income, as
have the appropriators. The problem is nobody can agree on how
to do this without having, you know, what do you have to do,
present a student free lunch card there showing that you are
getting AFDC? How do you do this in a fair way?
At our last hearing, it was suggested that one possibility
would be that in your tax form, if you are at, pick a figure,
$35,000 or less, you could either check, which probably won't
work, or have it automatically go over where you get sent a
parks pass.
The question is, resistance may come from IRS because we
are using them for something other than just taxes, but how to
do this in a simple way is our challenge because this isn't
going to go down less.
The Park pass is an incredibly good bargain, and it shows
people will pay fees or taxes if they believe it's going to be
used wisely. But we've got to figure out how this doesn't
disproportionally impact low income people's access to it.
Now, what I wanted to start with in this question time is
with Mr. Dickenson. We've heard this management policy
question, and I don't want to plunge into too much detail
because I think it's a good point that's going to evolve, but
this has hit all of us in a different way as we've more or less
been stalemated in Congress from any major changes in either
direction.
Are management policies, what has been proposed here, are
they followed closely by superintendents? Are these binding?
What would policy changes out of the Department of Interior
mean as a practical matter? Did you work through any of this
type of thing before to fight off some----
Mr. Dickenson. The management policies at the time give
guidance to field personnel in terms of the operational
problems that may arise and also to express the values and the
long-term philosophical operational approach to dealing with
the park problems.
From time to time, there are events and situations that
arise that cause a change, be it popularity of snowmobiles and
whether or not those should be admitted to all areas and have
the winter use program, etc.
But I've never in my time, in my time, have never seen
anything as insidious as what is being proposed now by the
Hoffman paper. My understanding of this thing is that it would
change the entire approach of superintendents and others who
make policy decisions at the park level which would be tragic
in terms of the long-term effect on the national park system.
So not to minimize, not to minimize the effect of those
management policies because they are followed, and I would
predict, however, that the rank and file of the National Park
Service, if somehow these changes came about, there would be a
rebellion.
I think that the people in the service are so deeply
committed to the preservation of these National Parks into the
future for use by future generations that you will probably see
a mass exodus. I don't think a lot of people would continue to
support the parks.
Mr. Souder. You were parks director under Secretary Watt.
Mr. Dickenson. Yes.
Mr. Souder. Did you see any similar proposal? The most
controversial words are ``would irreversibly harm.'' Did you
ever hear that proposed under Watt or under Reagan?
Mr. Dickenson. Not in those terms. There were efforts from
time to time to enlarge the kinds of permissible uses in
National Parks which included oil drilling, a more favorable
view toward leasing minerals, etc. So I can say that it didn't
occur. Why didn't it occur? Well, it didn't occur because I
fought it, a lone voice in the wilderness at times, but I
fought it. There was strong support on the hill to maintain the
status quo.
Above all, I always felt that I could rely upon the
citizens of the United States of America to fight such an
insidious proposal to change--to radically change the way we
operate parks.
If you start opening it up to the kinds of uses which I
think are being proposed, you will no longer have a National
Park System, per se. The kind of purpose that it serves now is
renowned worldwide. And while there are different standards in
different countries regarding parks, one of the basic things is
the preservation of these natural features and cultural
features for the use of future generations. That's constant
throughout.
Mr. Souder. And irreversible harm, would that term with the
possible, I mean, certain cultural resources, like, if
basically the Declaration of Independence were destroyed, it
wouldn't be there, but wouldn't almost everything else be
reversible? It would almost just be a question of the time? In
other words, isn't that almost like a double standard?
Mr. Dickenson. If you want to talk about cultural
resources.
Mr. Souder. But take a natural resource that you had that
the only thing that would limit something is irreversible harm,
most things will bounce back. It's a question of whether it's
10 years or 100 years or 200 years, so wouldn't that almost, in
effect, be anything is allowable under a standard of the only
things that are banned is if it does irreversible harm?
Mr. Dickenson. Not in my view because the visitors to the
National Parks System of the United States expect to find a
certain standard of performance. And one of the long-running
battles that has occurred is timber extraction of the National
Parks. Sure, it will come back in 100 or 200 years, but what is
the immediate effect upon the visitor who comes to have a
recreational experience in the park to see a series of clear
cuts next to Old Faithful?
I have great difficulty reconciling the irreversibility
argument. I think that we went through a lot of policy
discussion about the extinction of force fires. There's great
natural value in having natural burns. Allowing for natural
succession depends on it.
I always felt, however, that those fires, those fires,
which are in the vicinity of public use areas or those that may
impact the quality of the visitor experience, need to be
extinguished now promptly because of the scarring. That is
something that the visitor doesn't expect.
And I believe the expectations of the American people are
that they do not want to have damage inflicted even on a short
term or long term basis on National Parks. Let the natural
processes work.
Mr. Souder. So your definition of irreversible harm would
also be relative to what the expectations are of the visitors,
what their expectation is to see and that harm isn't just
conceptual, kind of like, well, this will bounce back in 200
years because most of you will be dead in 200 years who are
visiting the parks, and it says not only to preserve, but for
the enjoyment thereof.
And you believe it would be irreversible harm for the
enjoyment thereof for the people coming to the park?
Mr. Dickenson. Precisely. I just cannot reconcile the short
term impact. For what purpose? Is there a commercial motive
involved here, you know? And commercialism inside the park
isn't allowed. That's why the whole system was set up as it was
from the outset in the event the multiplication of facilities
all competing for the tourist dollar.
And so I just believe that any kind of change in the basic
policy governing the long-term maintenance of the park would be
tragic.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
Mr. Inslee.
Mr. Inslee. Thank you, Mr. Dickenson. I very much
appreciate your service in those past decades. I'm glad your
voice is still active, and that of Mr. Watt is in the dustbin
of history, so I appreciate you are still here.
Mr. Dickenson. Those were busy years.
Mr. Inslee. Yes. You faired very well through those years.
We appreciate your courage in those difficult times sometimes.
You mentioned this Mission 66, and it spurred a thought. Is
there some grander vision that we should be thinking about
here? You know, listening to our discussion, I was thinking,
you know, we're fighting for appropriations, we're fighting to
keep up with inflation, sort of dry account is the types of
terms.
For those of us who are real believers in the parks and the
grander vision of the parks, should we be thinking in a
different image or statement or campaign? Should we be thinking
about a new birth of the American park system? Should we be
thinking about some other nomenclature or package to wrap up
our vision for the parks that is grander in scope that may
connect more with the American people?
Do you have any thoughts in that regard? I don't have any.
I would love to know yours.
Mr. Dickenson. The 100th anniversary of the establishment
of the National Park Service comes in 2016. And some people
have thought in terms of a renewed reinvestment effort tied to
that. That has some merit, I believe. It's quite a way off, but
in view of the multiple problems facing the United States now
and the drain on the budget, etc., probably some long-range
thinking ahead of time is desirable and that is one of the
things that is being considered by some.
Mr. Inslee. Great idea. We should start thinking about it.
Ms. Jewell, you come from a business perspective, and I
have not heard at least anything of any significance of
criticisms of the Park Service for their managerial skill. In
other words, the typical reaction is you get funding issues,
No. 1, either you are not spending it well enough, you are
wasting it or you don't have enough revenues.
And I haven't heard much criticism of the Park Service of
massive waste, fraud and abuse. I think I heard of a $600
outhouse somewhere that made the headlines briefly, but from
your organization's standpoint, is there any specific
suggestions in that regard as far as sort of managing and
approving management from a fiscal perspective that we ought to
consider besides the revenue side?
Ms. Jewell. Well, I think that overall there is no
criticism that's appropriate to level at the Park Service for
mismanagement of resources. I think they are doing a very good
job under the circumstances. I think as Dave Uberuaga talked
about, when you are dealing with national registered historic
structures, that automatically increases your cost. When you
are dealing within the Federal contracting arena, that
automatically increases your costs.
One of my frustrations as member of the Board of Regents of
the University of Washington is having to deal within the
structure of State regulation and how that increases costs
relative to the private sector. So I think the extent that we
might think about how those regulations impact the efficiency
of our spending are important.
One of the areas the NPCA has been involved in that I think
has been generally welcomed by the Park Service is something
they call the Center for Park Management, which is actually
using MBA students as well as professionals, bringing them into
the parks to work alongside the Park Service staff to help
identify areas of perspective enhancement to the efficiency of
their spend.
You know, one of the examples I've heard at our board
meetings is about fleet maintenance and how you do that in a
more efficient basis compared to what the private sector might
do. And I think that there is--I have seen a complete openness
on the part of the Park Service to find better ways of doing
things that are less expensive so that they can put resources
where they need them most. So, you know, this is not a
situation where as a private citizen or a business person I've
seen evidence of irresponsible spending. I think that we have
people that are scrambling to spend money as wisely as they
possibly conclude.
Mr. Inslee. Thank you.
Ms. Jewell. Can I add something to your question earlier of
Mr. Dickenson? You talked about the irreversible damage. One of
the things that he didn't mention, but I know, I'm sure, is in
his mind, is that of wildlife. When you put roads or you put
motorized vehicles into areas that have previously not had
traffic, it absolutely impacts the wildlife habitat.
And when you are dealing with some critically endangered
species which we have in a number of places, you run the risk
of not having that habitat sufficient to sustain those species,
and that is a reversible.
One of the things that I learned at the last NPCA board
meeting that I attended in Glacier National Park was really how
much better job we're doing in the United States relative to
Canada on contiguous habitat for grizzly bears. And, of course,
everybody is not necessarily fond of grizzly bears, but as with
so many other critical indicator species, if they go, other
things go as well. You've got, you know, an increase in other
populations which begins to impact the wild and scenic areas.
And I think Yellowstone is one which has received a lot of
attention----
Mr. Dickenson. I appreciate that.
Ms. Jewell. Yeah, the motorized traffic, even if it is not
by putting in additional roads, but just putting access into
some of that back country, does have irreversible damage on the
wildlife populations even if the natural environment might
regenerate itself. I think that's just an important thing to
add.
Mr. Inslee. One comment. I think one of the reasons people
are so concerned about National Parks is that we have similar
funding issues in our recreational use in our Forest Service
budget and others. There were two mountains I was going to go
up this year, Mt. Constance and Glacier Peak. Both of the roads
to those places are closed, and there are no plans that I'm
aware of to re-open them because of Forest Service funding
issues to allow this recreational access to national land.
At the same time, the current plan of the administration is
to scrap the roadless area rule which would allow the
administration to spend taxpayer subsidized dollars to go build
logging roads to clear cut in our most pristine national forest
lands, at the same time the Forest Service doesn't keep
existing roads open to get hikers and fishers and hunters to go
up to existing Federal lands, and those roads are also used to
access the national park. You go into the Buck Horn Road and
other roads, and they give you access to the national park.
I just mention that because the problems we're experiencing
in the backlog, which is $11 billion, there's an $11 billion
backlog for keeping recreational roads open in the Forest
Service, and I just think that's an important point when we
talk about how dire this problem is.
Thank you.
Mr. Inslee. Mr. Fleck wanted to say something. I'm not
going to go into the roads and timber, but I do want to leave
that for another hearing at another time, sir. But the big
issue you raised about the lower income people having access to
the parks, that's a huge one. In my community, one out of four
kids live in families that meet the Federal poverty level, one
out of four. That's a huge one. The park is all around us.
There's some innovative things Olympic does when they have
their fee in place, when they don't, that allow access to those
parks. For a lot of folks and having grown up in the Tri-Cities
when WPPSS failed, the parks were the place for those of us who
didn't have money could go do things with our family. And so I
really think that is a tough one to crack, but it's one of the
most commendable ones to take on.
Mr. Souder. I wanted to comment briefly on Ms. Jewell's
comments relative to Mr. Dickenson's. He made a really
fascinating point because I don't think--we know for sure the
management plan isn't going to survive the way it is. It's just
a question of what it will look like.
And this irreversible argument is fascinating because it
has been underneath here for some time, and it is not an easy
one to handle because unless a species is so far gone and they
have no habitat, it is amazing how they bounce back. The
grizzly bears are, in fact, a good example of that and wolves
are a good example of when you reintroduce them, they do come
back.
But if we have a different standard, then whether they
theoretically could come back in 50 or 100 years, this will be
an easier debate to have. Because even in the fish and wildlife
law, I understand what you were driving at, if we get rid of
the habitat, they'll leave different areas, but it's amazing
even in wetlands how habitat can come back if you concentrate
on it and work on it. It's just far more expensive, it takes a
long time, and you lose in the interim a question of the value.
But he put a little bit different spin on this because
underneath it, we're always debating that fundamental question
whenever there's a new housing development, whenever there's a
new anything in a community. And these are tough tradeoffs in
the margin of where the young people who love to hike and love
to be in the outdoors are increasingly looking at areas around
the national forests and national parks, these zones, and even
responsibility of the cost to the taxpayer of forest fires when
people go up against these zones. It's a huge, huge challenge.
I mean, sometimes--and in the end I have a different
challenge. We have 3 percent public lands counting township,
counties and State and Federal. It is a totally different
challenge. And the way many people look at it from Indiana is
that we pay, send our tax dollars that we work for out west so
that then people can have nice homes right up against all these
forests and everything, and then they catch fire, and we're
supposed to cover to rebuild their home in, say, Malibu Canyon
for the third time or other places, and then our kids want to
go out and live next to those forests, too, so we lose the best
of our areas.
And we have to figure out kind of where these interact
areas are. And it isn't just a question of whether there's
irreversible damage, it's a question of how are we going to
have logical buffer zones and feeder zones with that.
Mr. Reichert.
Mr. Reichert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Jewell, you mentioned the reduction of interpretive
rangers and the contracting. Do you know who the contract is
with?
Ms. Jewell. No. It was Yellowstone is what I was referring
to. That's just personal experience. But I don't know who the
contractors were.
Mr. Reichert. That would be a question for the first panel.
Ms. Jewell. We can come up with the answer I'm sure through
NPCA.
Mr. Reichert. OK. Do you know if there's any arrangements
with the National Archives or the Smithsonian or Department of
Education partnershipping with the National Park Service as to
provide some of that educational opportunity? I just think
that's an important piece that we need to focus on.
Ms. Jewell. I don't have an answer.
Mr. Reichert. Does anyone on the panel know.
Mr. Dickenson. There's a long-term arrangement between the
National Park Service and the Library of Congress for the
recording of historic structures which has been most valuable
through the years, I think well over 50 years.
Mr. Reichert. Thank you.
Ms. Jewell. I will get an answer to that, though, through
NPCA if there are any such arrangements and let you know.
Mr. Souder. Can I make a comment on that.
Mr. Reichert. Sure. You are the chairman.
Mr. Souder. Because one of the things that we need to look
at, which I have really stressed because it's clear that the
Park Service is pretty effective at responding to local schools
right around a given park. But as I've watched through my
daughter who is an elementary school teacher, she was teaching
third grade, and they had a bat class, and she hooked up with
the superintendent down at Carlsbad Caverns who got her bat
information, and she was able to do that.
Well, the question is with the Internet now, and the
Department of Education ought to be taking a lead with this,
how can they make education more alive for kids like hooking up
with the tremendous resources we have on volcanos right now,
what happened at Mt. St. Helen's. You have a whole volcano row
from Lawson to Baker. You know, the history of how Lawson has
come back versus others that are kind of in between with Mt.
St. Helen's still smoking now, you know, how can this get
integrated into our curriculum shouldn't have to be borne just
by the Park Service, but they ought to be interconnected. So I
would love to work with you on that.
There are some, but interestingly it's stove pipe. Just
like we see with Homeland Security stove pipe, it's like
education. It's like somebody does education in this and this
and this and nobody is interconnecting.
Ms. Jewell. Can I just use an example here to illustrate
this? Because I think your point is very, very well taken. One
of the critical things that REI has been working on for some
time is how do we connect kids back to the outdoors? And I
think we all know challenges of sedentary lifestyles, you know,
distractions, video games, over scheduling, whatever the
reasons are that don't get kids playing outside or appreciating
nature, this is a critical issue going forward in the parks.
If we don't make them attractive and they don't--whether
it's through their schools or otherwise, don't have the
experiences that we had, we aren't going to have the advocates
for the future.
So for Russ's great grandson, that's amazing, and others,
if they aren't having a positive experience so they aren't
having something that engages them, whether it is a ranger or
whether it is a school teacher, we're in trouble.
One of the things that we've done at REI is take a backpack
that is chalk full of curriculum and Leave No Trace principles
and take it out to schools. We'll touch 50,000 children just
with our employees going out to school to teach Leave No Trace
principles.
And I think those kinds of efforts that are going on will
make a difference, and I think that the parks have been very
willing to work with us and with others in engaging youth
groups.
I took a young woman up to do some back country camping on
Mt. Rainier, and there were 100 Boy Scouts up there at that
time. And they are allowed into the park to participate in
winter camping experiences in exchange for doing volunteer
service projects there in the summertime.
So those are the kinds of things that I do think go on that
stretch those resources to young people, and I think to the
extent the National Parks would work with outside
organizations, that would just supplement that.
Mr. Reichert. Thank you. I just think that is so important.
And Mr. Fleck's question or response to a question on, you
know, how low income families or lower income families may be
to enjoy the parks reminded me of the days that my family of
nine rode to Mt. Rainier and were accessed to the park for
free, and it was a place that we could go as a low income
family. Great memories and a great opportunity for us to learn.
And that brings me to Mr. Dickenson's comments. I thought
that you spoke with a lot of passion and a lot of feeling, and
you can tell that you enjoyed your career very, very much. Even
though the challenges were there, of course, you had great
experience not just with history, but you speak with a lot of
wisdom, and the people in this room and the people on this
panel certainly should pay close attention to the words that
you shared with us today.
I identified with your remarks to a certain degree having
been a sheriff in this county for 8 years and having to make
those $1 to $2 million cuts to a $110 million budget a year and
trying to prioritize your resources and really what is your
core business function and how do you provide those things like
interpretive rangers or school resource officers or DARE
officers where the connections through our young people are so
critical.
And to me, that's been a passion, and I know the people in
the community know that, you know, working with Green River and
working with kids on the street, prostitutes and kids on drugs,
they need to get out into our parks and see what this world is
about other than the streets of downtown mega cities across our
country.
I want to just take the opportunity, Mr. Chairman, to share
a story that I think really draws it to the point Mr. Inslee
was also making is what kind of vision should we really have
for our National Park System and preserving our parks.
I don't have a great grandson yet, sir, but I have six
grandchildren, and my oldest grandson will soon turn 11, and
his sister is 8. And a few years ago, I think they were 7 and
5, and we were on the east side of the mountains, and we were
walking through an area that was sort of a high desert area. It
was in the spring, and the snow was beginning to melt. And as
we walked, they were holding my hands. And I just have to share
this story. I'm sorry. I'm proud of my grand kids, too, but
it's just a picture of really what we need to preserve here.
And if you can imagine a grandfather and a 7-year-old
grandson and a 5-year-old granddaughter. I know you can. And
some of you in the audience, I see there's a few of you out
there, and as we're walking through the snow that is melting
and bare patches of grass, we come along a track of some deer,
a couple of deer. And so we stop, and we point out the deer
track, and the excitement in their face, their eyes, you know,
get wide and bright and excited because there's a possibility
we could see a deer.
And so I pointed it out, and I said, ``Let's go on. Let's
see if we can find a deer.'' And they said, ``Yeah, let's go
on.'' So we walked a few feet further, and around this--it was
sagebrush, and we came across another track that all of a
sudden joined the deer track, and it looked to me like it was
either a bobcat or a cougar. And so we stopped, and I said,
``You know this, Caleb, Timmery, this looks like it could be
the track of a big cat,'' you know. Their first thought was big
kitty cat, and I said, ``No, this is like a cougar, you know.''
And I said, ``But let's go on.''
And I tried to move forward, and they are stuck in the
snow. They aren't going anywhere. And my grandson tugs at my
right arm, and he says, ``Papa, correct me if I'm wrong,'' and
this is a quote, I never talked like this when I was his age,
believe me, ``correct me if I'm wrong, but don't cougar eat
deer?'' And I said, ``Yes, Caleb, they do.''
And so we walked or I tried to. I said, ``We should go. We
should move, go on.'' He yanks back on my hand one more time,
and he said, ``Papa, do you really think it wise we continue
on?''
And it's just--I tell that story often to groups because I
do think it wise we continue on. This is a tough problem we
have ahead of us. And I really appreciate so much both panels
being here today and the work that you do. And I know everyone
in this room has a passion for this and a great desire to see
that we preserve our lands for the enjoyment of our kids, our
grand kids and my great grand kids eventually, sir, and
congratulations on your great career.
And I just wanted to tell the community here since we're in
the 8th District that I'm committed to this project, too. I am
committed to protecting our lands here, and, as you can see,
the panel members are all quite passionate about this. And it's
just an honor to be here today, and I thank you so much for
your help and everything.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Souder. Thank you. I want to just do a few more
questions here before we finish up so I can make sure I get a
couple of these things right.
First, I thank you for your work with NPCA. There are lots
of different groups with lobbyists, but the key thing is to get
accurate information and comprehensive data. And I very much
appreciate their involvement with these hearings and with the
data on the hill with the Parks Caucus, and the testimony you
gave today will just be very helpful.
Each year we come out with a hearing book, and we're going
to do a final year end report like they do. Ours will have the
official congressional report, and we can work together, but
thank you for your work with that, too, because I know having
come from the business community, you never know when you get
mail from all these different groups which ones are actually
working and which ones are mostly raising money. They have been
a tremendous help.
One of the problems, I wanted to ask Mr. Malmberg this and
then Mr. Dickenson, one of the problems we have is no matter
what we do here, let it be even in working with the Centennial
Act, it won't be enough money that there are going to be
serious structural changes in how we do things. The Park
Service is already probably the most contracted out agency in
the Federal Government. We're clearly using supplementary
funds, that the same thing that is hitting Northwest Airlines
and every airlines and GE and Ford and GM are both struggling
with pensions and how to deal with healthcare costs. As a
society, we just plain make more promises than we can meet
given the economic growth.
The Park Service has been systematically getting better at
kind of an architectural inventory, a cultural resources
inventory, trying to do core ops, trying to do different things
of how do we prioritize because one of the problems is that the
only management problem I have ever seen is lack of willingness
sometimes to make hard decisions because everything is
important. And if everything is important, nothing is
important.
And how are we going to do this? I'm on the board of the
Indiana Landmarks, and one of my frustrations is that if you
say every old bridge needs to be preserved, every old school
needs to be preserved, the cost to do this right is about
impossible.
At the Lewis & Clark sites, I got to see the archeological
site. Archaeology is one of the things that gets kicked out
early. And, quite frankly, if we don't do the archaeology, 50
years from now we may decide something was important that we
didn't do at the time, as we have learned from some of the
world's most famous archeological sites that these things tend
to go over the top of each other. And it is one of the hardest
to sell.
Then the next thing is the buildings which is a huge
problem because if every building has to be preserved in the
way it was originally made and every building is deemed
archaeologically significant, there's just no way that we're
going to be able to keep up. I mean, whether it's trying to
keep up adobe buildings or how to preserve Native American
things, then this also leads to the question of do we focus on
a particular era theme at a park, what is its primary and what
is its secondary?
We just saw this on the Lexington Concord Road that the
Park Service in trying to make it somewhat similar, you get
into all kinds of questions here. There weren't any trees, they
had cut down the trees to farm, so now if you cut down all the
trees on the Lexington Concord Road, much like at Gettysburg,
people will holler because it's mostly really a bike path right
now. Most people who are using that park are using it as a bike
trail not to try to, you know, see the Lexington Concord. What
is the park mission here?
Furthermore, they have now wound up with a bunch of
buildings that are historically significant, but weren't there
with the mission of the park, and yet they have to use the same
kind of nails, the same kind of window panes, the same kind of
paint to try to redo this.
And what I fear will happen with this Centennial Bill is if
we don't kind of figure out, OK, which ones are going to be
maintained at the purest level, which ones are we going to
maintain at a mid level, and which ones are we going to just
basically let go to rot, what we're going to do here and NPCA,
and we have discussed this intensively, even in trying to
address the operating as opposed to backlog, the danger here is
people are going to say add nothing, which is the position of
the Park Service.
Basically, for the last 8 years they've opposed every new
proposal we came up with, didn't like the Lewis & Clark
proposal initially, particularly at the Washington side or for
that matter the trail because we have a backlog, we can't keep
our personnel here, why should we add that?
Angel Island is a huge challenge. Here's arguably the Ellis
Island for the Asian area. The State of California hasn't put
the funds in. It's falling down. If the Federal Government
doesn't intervene, it may not be there.
Plus the whole new concept, which Lewis & Clark is a
classic example of, the historic example is a contiguous kind
of solid park together as opposed to five different, say,
historical, cultural or some green space which is really what's
happening more east of the Mississippi because most of the
funds in the Park Service have been dedicated to the west.
Now you see a rising desire for this in the east, which is
somewhat compromised in a sense of environmentally compromised
land, sites that aren't necessarily contiguous and to try to
buy up the land in between is impossible. And we're going to
lose those sites if they are built over. It's not irreversible.
You can always tear down 50-story buildings, but you are not
likely to, or huge condo developments.
But how do we, in effect, make these decisions on the
archaeology, on preservation of the building and the
prioritization of the land?
And I wanted to ask you, Mr. Malmberg, because clearly, and
I'm going to raise the second part of this with Mr. Dickenson,
and that should be the last of my questions, but we'll see,
because in Washington State, and Oregon less so because they
appear to have a fund built in for their parks a little
different than others, but I saw this in the California
Redwoods, we are increasingly doing more partnerships and let
me describe this as it now ties in with the first, at
California Redwoods, the Redwoods are actually predominantly
State parks and were there before the Federal Government got
involved. The Federal Government interconnected in between.
When we started this process, the Federal Government had a
few rangers and the State was the dominant. Now there's 120, I
believe, NPS employees, and we're down to 20 State employees.
The State has lowered and lowered, much like you were
worried about the private sector being replaced. What in fact
has happened is the States are not keeping up proportionately
even with the Federal increases.
You talked about the additional money coming in in the
State of Washington, but this is going to be a challenge as we
look at the Washington side of the State park, that as we look
at California, another thing that has happened is the State,
the Federal boundary line is drawn around Redwoods, but the
State has added some more watershed area.
Now that the Federal Government is taking about, what, 80
percent of the staff there, the Federal rangers can't go in to
protect this watershed area, and it's not in the Redwood park.
But since most of the people are now Federal people, what
we've come to understand is if we say we're just going to deal
with backlog, we're just going to deal with the current staff,
what has happened is we've all understood more that, hey, the
watersheds to our existing parks are pretty critical, and not
everybody has forest land up against them, and we're going to
have to get more buffers, and it is very hard to get this into
the National Park.
I'm raising a number of these things because, as you know,
as you told me and as I have been told earlier, the State of
Washington has five interpretive rangers in the State is my
understanding, and you've got them all. And three of them are
at Lewis and Clark.
Are they going to stay at Lewis and Clark? Is the State,
now that we have a partnership and this is a national park, is
the State also going to come up to the table or are those going
to get transferred out after the anniversary is over, and the
Federal Government is going to do it?
How are we really going to work these partnerships? How are
we going to partner and prioritize? Because as you are digging
those archeological sites there to move the area, we're finding
other things. And there's a couple of sites there, the one on
your coin, that's a Washington site that is on private land
that you are distributing a nickel, isn't it, to the whole
world, and people are going to want to go see it, and they
can't?
Now, I understand that this needs to be worked out long
term, and I know this is not something probably anybody from
Washington wanted me to raise, but at some point that needs to
be worked through so people can go through there.
But if you are adding new land, I'm raising that this has
another complexity because we don't want to kind of freeze the
Park Service, and yet what we're saying is we don't have enough
money to freeze the Park Service, even with the additional
money, but we are going to always have new things, and how are
we going to deal with this? And I just kind of wanted to pick
your brain.
Mr. Malmberg. That was a very long question.
Mr. Souder. It was a short question. It was a long buildup.
Mr. Malmberg. Well, unfortunately, the State park systems
have emulated the national park system in a number of ways and
deferred maintenance or maintenance backlog is also a major
problem in our agency, as I'm sure it is in Oregon, too.
We're continually looking at different ways to keep these
funded. If you want to specifically talk about Lewis & Clark
State and national historic sites since that is in my region, I
can very well tell you we are not looking at dropping out
because the National Park Service has come in to help us run
the park.
Cape Disappointment is one of the largest parks in our
State system. It happens to earn enough revenue to support
itself at this point. We put a million dollars into that Lewis
& Clark interpretive center. We don't look like we are going to
back out and say, ``OK. Now you can send people over.''
What we're looking at is trying to provide, as we said, a
seamless service because the public doesn't understand the
difference between my flat hats and the National Park Service
flat hats. They don't understand the difference between the
arrowhead logo and our logo and Oregon State Parks logo. All
they want is to come to enjoy the resources, have a good time,
spend time with their grand-kids, and we're committed to that.
And the nickel that you mentioned that has an ocean view
happens to be a view of Cape Disappointment, which happens to
be under my management, so you can get onto it.
Mr. Souder. My understanding is the land where the view is
from is privately held, and it's not even clear precisely where
that is, but either choice is privately held.
Mr. Malmberg. You can take a picture, and I can get you
into the spot where you can take that picture. But, yes, and we
are continually looking at buying that. We just bought about 20
acres in that particular area to add to that park, so we're
committed to that.
But we also have the same problem of deciding what's
important. Which one of your children do you give up to raise
the other one up to maturity? It's a tough--it's tough. You
just asked the toughest question in any kind of parks
management because there are no resources that are worth it.
Mr. Souder. So you wouldn't, and, Mr. Dickenson, maybe you
can address that, so you wouldn't, say, prioritize under the
Antiquities Act, the Landmarks Act or so on and just say some
of these things are higher priority?
I mean, to some degree the Park Service is doing that, but
to some degree you are mandated to protect everything once it
reaches a certain year. It's just a matter of----
Mr. Dickenson. Well, there's some leeway. Just as an aside,
I might mention that when I became director, there had been a
recent surge in authorization of new areas, a very dramatic
surge, and so there was essentially during my time a 5-year
moratorium on adding new areas to the system in order to, what
we call, catch up, to use the resources in the best possible
manner.
Every time that you authorize a new area for the system,
that impacts every other unit within the existing system, and
if the budget doesn't take into account the arrival of this new
child, well, then, somebody has to pay the price.
Now, I think the system must expand. There's always a need
to honor the achievements of our fellow citizens, our heroes
and heroines, and so in the historical field, the cultural
field particularly, there's room for growth as the years go on
in order to recognize the flow of history.
I have a personal belief that most of the outstanding
nationally significant natural areas in the United States have
been recognized. And I would think that Congress ought to look
pretty carefully at any new proposal to add new areas. There
are other--I would have to be convinced personally that there
is a high degree of national significance and no other agency
in a position to provide the kind of sensitive oversight that
needs to be given to these areas.
Regarding how you make judgments regarding what you
preserve and what you do not or to what degree do you say you
are going to preserve, this is a judgment that has to be made
by a thorough study of the historical personage or background.
Every outhouse doesn't need to be saved on Mt. Vernon, for
example. The same is true in any unit of the system where you
have cultural resources. Judgments have to be made as to
whether you will give it the highest degree of protection
faithful to history, faithful to the architectural values or
whether there shall be elimination.
Historical property can be exposed of depending on the kind
of advice that you receive from the professionals or benign
neglect. It's perfectly within the purview, I think, of the
managers that serve to make these kind of judgments with
professional advice.
Mr. Souder. Let me followup on one thing on the additional
land. An argument could be made that of the crown jewel parks,
they were pretty well done like in the 40's with a few
exceptions, that past the crown jewels, you get into a now more
difficult question, and then you get to the next tier, and the
same thing could be said of cultural arts, Gettysburg versus
the home of an artist or the Longfellow house where it was both
Longfellow's and Washington's headquarters, but it's been
altered multiple times, and you have one house inside of
another house, that part of the political problem is that,
bluntly put, I don't believe the State parks have in fact kept
up with the National Parks. I don't believe that's a fact, that
we've increased the Federal funding at a faster rate nationally
taken over 10 or 20 years than the State parks.
Back in the days of Roosevelt and others, Indiana, Iowa, a
few other States were at the cutting edge, and you had a
phenomenal State park system in the country. And if you look at
the additional units to the State parks in the United States,
it is far less than the additions to the units of the Federal
park proportionally.
And what has happened is that has put more pressure on the
national park system to pick up things that are regionally
significant because if they aren't doing it, there won't be any
green space.
So what may have been a second tier green space in terms of
looking at it compared to Rainier, it's the only green space
left, and it's very expensive in the east, and this is a
political challenge that many of my Republican colleagues from
the west who always complain about the Federal Government
approach and how much Federal land they have, so I, when
Chairman Hansen was head of the committee, proposed that 67
percent of any new dollars go east of the Mississippi and
challenged some of my western colleagues to say, ``Look, we'll
take the money.'' They decided initially they were kind of
leaning toward it, but then the sagebrush rebellion wasn't that
much of a sagebrush rebellion. They liked the money.
But the rug hits the road almost every week right now in
Congress with something coming up from the floor. At the
Brandywine Battlefield, the heart of the battlefield was going
to be donated by a convent, not donated, but was going to sell
at about one fourth the market value. It was going to be sold
to a condo developer, and we would never have it. It also
happened to be some of the only green space contiguous to the
Wyath and then I think there's a fish and wildlife area to keep
some open space in suburban Philadelphia.
This is the kind of real world tradeoff we're making. It's
a historic site. The Brandywine was not--it was important, but
not overwhelmingly important. We had a headquarters. We had
some other stuff. Yes, it was the heart of what was a sprawling
battlefield, but it's also green space. Now, historically that
might have been a State park, but the State doesn't do anything
about it. It would have just been built over. And yet the
majority of Congress, in fact, lies east of the Mississippi.
My friend Jim Ridenour tried to come up with national
recreation areas or heritage areas, I should say, to try to
head this off. You've got a moratorium, the moratorium is about
to end, and so he says, ``OK. Let's stop this park barreling,
you guys, by putting heritage areas in.''
Now what happens is we have, I think it is, 40 some
heritage areas that we've authorized in Congress, and they can
only manage eight a year in a study over the Park Service.
And, literally, we're going to have 200 heritage areas
where the Park Service is going to have to put their sign up,
where they are going to have to have their staff there, but
won't have any control over it because, guess what, the same
demand that started with the park in Oklahoma, with Mackinac
Island, with the hot springs in Arkansas. They may not have
been if you look at the first five things in the Park Service.
One of them is out, one of them has been reduced and Mackinac
Island is back to a State park, that park barreling and adding
additional things started from the beginning is just not going
to stop.
So the question is how do we accommodate what is a--whether
it's the State's issue, whether it's other types of things, I
know the heritage areas are one way and the recreation areas
are another.
I mean, another dilemma we have in looking at this is Santa
Monica, Gateway and Golden Gate have 12 to 14 million visitors
a year compared to--what does Mt. Rainier have, 3?
Ms. Jewell. 1.2.
Mr. Souder. 1.2. So the people are voting with their feet.
Now, the interesting phenomenon here, as Brian O'Neal
challenges everybody to point out, is that furthermore if you
take the 100--I think it's the 120-mile radius around Yosemite,
more people go to Golden Gate from farther than 120 miles away
than go to Yosemite, yet we think of Yosemite as people take
one trip, but it's mostly used by locals.
It's because New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco are the
biggest convention centers and tourist areas in the United
States, so people go over to a unit of the park.
Even our concept of what are the crown jewels not in an
environmental sense, but in exposing people to it, where are
the Hispanics going to go to the parks? It's not likely that in
the first generation, it's going to be Yellowstone. Some will.
But it's going to be like San Antonio missions where they are
not even going to see the missions, but they're having a picnic
there. And the Park Service is trying to figure out that 90
percent of the people in their park are having a picnic and
then they go over and see the missions. These are in our core
challenge of who we are and how we fund this.
That said, I just wonder if you have a reaction to that?
Because you are in the middle of this. You saw this in effect.
Now that the Bush administration is in, like Reagan, they
basically wanted to have a moratorium on any new lands, and it
isn't working. And, therefore, all we do is add more units and
not increase the funding enough.
Mr. Dickenson. The development of the urban recreation
system in New York City and San Francisco just essentially in
my view came about because of the failure of the cities to
provide recreation. They were looking for an alternative. The
Federal Government gave them that alternative. That's not to
say that there haven't been some good results and some real
benefits derived from the urban recreation concept system.
Georgia, for example, has a marvelous downtown largely
natural Chattahoochee River. The benefits that flow from that
are tremendous. But the question was then and I guess still is,
is that a proper responsibility of the Federal Government and
the National Park Service to run that sort of thing, especially
when you are dealing with a very prized possession. The
National Parks have been called crown jewels, and why that is
is because they are so unique. There is nothing unique about
downtown Atlanta. And I will probably hear from that.
And Golden Gate and San Francisco have marvelous assembling
of recreation. But in the long run, is that a proper
responsibility of the National Park Service and the Federal
Government versus the row of the city? That's a pretty
fundamental question there.
But you might say it's already been decided, but there
hasn't been any expansion of that concept now for over 20
years. So at least you would think that somebody has given some
consideration to it.
If you dilute it, if you dilute the National Park System by
putting in what might be called inferior, substandard or not
nationally qualified areas, you can destroy it because it's a
concept in the mind of the American people that makes the
National Park System such a success, the idea that this is
unique. There's only one Grand Canyon. There is only one
Yellowstone. There is only one Mt. Rainier, per se, and so on.
And if you dilute this by bringing in what I won't call
substandard areas, but areas which ought to be managed by
others perhaps, and put this on the National Park Service, I
think it weakens the entire system.
Mr. Souder. All right. I appreciate those comments. It's a
huge question. My friend Congressman Markey from Massachusetts,
every time he puts in an oil derrick in the Arctic National
Refuge, I always ask him the question because I don't think
it's correct that there's been no new concepts.
One of the new concepts was the Boston Islands National
Park area where the Federal Government owns nothing, and inside
of that is Logan Airport. And I asked him whether he wants to
remove Logan Airport from the national park because their city
sewer system is in the national park area, their airport is in
the national park area. It does have the first lighthouse, but
that is under the Coast Guard, and it has a fort that is under
the State, but it was put into the Park Service, basically, to
try to get an excuse to do an environmental cleanup.
Now, those islands are beautiful, and they could be
restored, but they are not going to take these back to pristine
standard of even Yellowstone because you have a big city around
it with their airport in it and their sewer system in it and
big oil distribution tanks in it, yet it's now part of what's a
new term, the only one I believe in our service, called a
National Park Area.
We are also increasingly getting national park reserves,
which is another new term to basically try to manage and to
expand to try to keep people farming next to a park to try to
keep high rises out so we pay through the Park Service kind of
a sustaining thing which is a variation of what we have done
which is really proliferating because we can't afford to add
the land, but we work with nature conservancy with these kind
of things.
And this is going to continue to evolve, but these are the
real world things we are trying to deal with in the budget is
every time you do a heritage area, every time you do a park
area, if we say we're increasing funds at 3 percent, but the
payroll is increasing at 7, and then we add all these new
areas, this doesn't work unless we change something internally
and/or get more money from outside.
All that to say, I don't think you have to worry about
substitution of funds. We have some really structural problems
that we're trying to deal with, partly because people love the
parks so much they want everything to be a national park. And
then unless the State and local try to help with this, we're in
a whole heap of trouble.
Mr. Dickenson. There's a couple of things I want to add. I
worry about the impact of commercialism as a reason for
establishing a park, and while this has not been blatantly done
in recent years, at one point in our history, one of the things
that local groups pushed the Congress is to establish areas
because they had an impact upon the local economy. And that
leaves the door open for less than nationally significant areas
coming into the system.
We haven't seen much of that in recent times and thank
goodness because that really could be the death of the system
as far as I'm concerned. You have to have those high standards
maintained, and if the standard of service at the areas
themselves that are already established isn't up to snuff, the
public is turned off, and the value of the national park system
for people in the United States is simply going to go down when
that happens.
Mr. Souder. Maybe we can mix some of the dark brown with
some of the light brown, and that will really start a political
battle.
Mr. Inslee. Just commenting, there is a unique place in my
district on Bainbridge Island. It's the first place in the
United States where Japanese American citizens of the United
States were interned by the Executive order of the President.
We have an effort now to add a very small park to the Minidoka
or other complex National Park Service.
When that happens, Mr. Dickenson, I hope you will join us
when that--at the celebration where I can honor your service
when we finally get that done.
First, I want to thank Mr. Chairman. I want to tell--Mr.
Reichert told one story. I just want to tell one story in
parting. My dad was working on Mt. Rainier in the SCA program
back in the 60's, and they were going to build an outhouse
facility. And, of course, a quick way to do that is with
dynamite rather than shovels, of course.
And so they were using some dynamite. And my dad said,
``Well, let's just throw in an extra stick there and get this
done fast.'' So they threw an extra stick in, and, of course,
they didn't think properly because they had the outhouse, a
very nicely constructed outhouse, and they had actually sawn
from timber they had taken down themselves, and, of course,
they blew out the outhouse.
And I just tell that story because I think you can be
confident we're going to take a renewed effort not to blow up
the Park Service budget, not to destroy our National Parks, and
we are going to do everything we can to make sure of this
fulfillment for future generations, and we are going to be
fiscally responsible in doing it.
No one has brought up the fact we have a $400 billion
deficit today. There's no money in Washington, DC. We're going
to make sure there's money available to take care of these
parks.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Reichert. I would just add one thing. Thank you to Mr.
Chairman for holding this hearing and again thank you to all of
you for being here.
Mr. Souder. I thank all of you. I mean, it's interesting
even in New Orleans, I think it's the John Recede Park, took a
pretty bad beating, but yet as you look at what they were
trying to do out there, much like in the Everglades, if you
destroy some of the ecosystem, the floods can hit the city
quicker. And it's going to be interesting to see even the Park
Service pressure on trying to rehab four parks down there in
New Orleans that they are trying to put together. And we're
still getting the inventory.
But ironically the Park Service and/or other Federal
Government may have to look at the wetland system going into
New Orleans as a buffer, and those kind of things were never
asked of the Park Service years ago.
Mr. Dickenson. Right.
Mr. Souder. Thank you each for your testimony and your
time. The subcommittee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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